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SerenityOS network booting via TFTP and DHCP

By network booting, this guide implies a target computer (physical or virtual) that tries to boot over the network through PXE. The setup presented here is also diskless, as the bootloader and the root file system are supplied over the network. This can be achieved using GRUB2 or PXELINUX although only GRUB2 provides a framebuffer to display the Serenity desktop.

Note: it is recommended to boot a mainstream operating system through PXE on the target at least once before attempting this, if only to make sure that your setup works.

General notes

This guide assumes several things:

  • The TFTP server root is /srv/tftp/
  • Bootloaders are located inside /srv/tftp/boot/
  • SerenityOS artefacts are located inside /srv/tftp/serenity/:
    • The kernel is located at /srv/tftp/serenity/kernel
      • You can find it at Build/i686/Kernel/Kernel
    • The ramdisk is located at /srv/tftp/serenity/ramdisk
      • You can use the QEMU image at Build/i686/_disk_image as a ramdisk

grub-pc-bin, which contains the BIOS modules for PXE booting GRUB2, isn't available from the ARM repos of Debian and Ubuntu so if you are using an ARM machine for your TFTP server you will need to extract and copy across the contents of the /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/ directory from the x86 package or build the files manually.

GRUB2

The easiest way to set up a DHCP and TFTP server is by using dnsmasq.

  1. Install the required packages on the TFTP server:

    • Debian and Ubuntu: sudo apt install grub-pc-bin dnsmasq
    • Make sure /srv/tftp/ is owned by the user tftp, otherwise the TFTP server won't serve files.

  2. Configure /etc/dnsmasq.conf like so, adjusting it appropriately for your hardware and network:

# Interface to use to provide DHCP and TFTP
interface=eth0

bind-interfaces

# Set default gateway
dhcp-option=3,192.168.0.1

# Set DNS servers to announce
dhcp-option=6,1.1.1.1

# If using IPV4, dnsmasq can coexist alongside another DHCP server
# by using the proxy command with dhcp-range instead.
dhcp-range=192.168.0.10,192.168.0.222,12h

# Don't function as a DNS server.
port=0

# Log information about DHCP transactions.
log-dhcp

# Set the root directory for files available via FTP,
tftp-root=/srv/tftp

enable-tftp

# The boot filename, Server name, Server Ip Address
dhcp-boot=boot/grub2/i386-pc/core.0,,192.168.0.7

After configuring dnsmasq, start it by running sudo systemctl start dnsmasq

  1. Copy all of the GRUB module files from /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/ into both /srv/tftp/boot/grub/i386-pc and /srv/tftp/boot/grub2/i386-pc

  2. Create a GRUB2 configuration file at /srv/tftp/boot/grub/grub.cfg like this:

set gfxmode=auto
insmod all_video
insmod gfxterm
terminal_output gfxterm

menuentry 'SerenityOS - netboot diskless graphical mode' {
        echo 'Loading kernel...'
        multiboot (tftp)/serenity/kernel root=/dev/ramdisk0
        echo 'Loading ramdisk...'
        module (tftp)/serenity/ramdisk
        echo 'Starting SerenityOS.'
}

menuentry 'SerenityOS - netboot diskless text mode' {
        set gfxkeep=text
        terminal_output console
        echo 'Loading kernel...'
        multiboot (tftp)/serenity/kernel root=/dev/ramdisk0 boot_mode=text
        echo 'Loading ramdisk...'
        module (tftp)/serenity/ramdisk
        echo 'Starting SerenityOS.'
}
  1. Place the SerenityOS kernel and ramdisk inside /srv/tftp/boot/grub/serenity/

You should now be able to PXE boot into Serenity if enough of your hardware is supported by the Serenity kernel.

PXELINUX

Warning: PXELINUX cannot set up a framebuffer for Multiboot targets, so you will most likely have no graphics on real hardware.

  1. Install required packages on the TFTP server
    • Debian: apt install pxelinux tftpd-hpa
    • Make sure /srv/tftp/ is owned by the user tftp, otherwise the TFTP server won't serve files
  2. Configure the DHCP server with the following options:
    • Next server IP: <static IP address of TFTP server>
    • Boot filename (for BIOS): boot/pxelinux/lpxelinux.0
  3. Place all the required bootloader modules (located inside /usr/lib/PXELINUX/ and /usr/lib/syslinux/modules/bios/ on Debian) inside /srv/tftp/boot/pxelinux/, which for the sample configuration file includes:
    • lpxelinux.0
    • ldlinux.c32
    • vesamenu.c32
    • libcom32.c32
    • libutil.c32
    • mboot.c32
  4. Put your default configuration file inside /srv/tftp/boot/pxelinux/pxelinux.cfg/
  5. Place the SerenityOS kernel and ramdisk inside /srv/tftp/boot/grub/serenity/

Sample PXELINUX default configuration file:

UI vesamenu.c32

LABEL SerenityOS
        KERNEL mboot.c32
        APPEND ../../serenity/kernel root=/dev/ramdisk0 --- ../../serenity/ramdisk

Troubleshooting

  • Issues with DHCP or TFTP usually require sniffing packets on the network to figure out.
  • TFTP is a slow protocol, transferring the QEMU disk image (~ 200 MiB) will take some time. Consider setting up a FTP or HTTP server for faster downloading of SerenityOS artefacts if your bootloader supports it.
  • Remember that SerenityOS has not been extensively tested on physical hardware.
  • Some BIOS implementations of PXE are buggy or some machines may not have a PXE boot option at all in which case you could try using iPXE.
  • Virtual machines can also be booted over the network. Cheat notes for QEMU on Linux, assuming br0 is already set up:
ip tuntap add tap0 mode tap user <username>
ip link set tap0 master br0
ip link set tap0 up

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/bridge/bridge-nf-call-iptables
echo 0 > /sys/devices/virtual/net/br0/bridge/multicast_querier

qemu-system-i386 -m 4096 -netdev tap,ifname=tap0,script=no,downscript=no,id=network0 -device e1000,netdev=network0 -boot n -debugcon stdio -s

SerenityOS network booting via USB (iPXE)

It is possible to boot SerenityOS with the help of a USB drive. This option seems to be reliable if netbooting with TFTP fails due to bugs in firmware. For USB booting, you will need to ensure your BIOS supports such feature.

You will need to have a USB drive you will be willing to wipe, so make sure to back up it first. You will also need to setup an HTTP server on your local network. Any HTTP server implementation will work, therefore we leave it to the reader to decide on which software to use and to figure out the right configuration for it.

After that, do a git clone of the iPXE project. Then you will need to create an iPXE script. Add the following file in the root folder of the project:

#!ipxe
console --x 1280 --y 1024
dhcp
kernel http://X.Y.Z.W/Kernel serial_debug root=/dev/ramdisk0
imgfetch http://X.Y.Z.W/ramdisk
boot

This file can be called in any name you'd want. For the sake of simplicity in this guide, this file is named script.ipxe from now on. Don't forget to replace X.Y.Z.W with your HTTP server IP address.

For troubleshooting purposes, you can add the following command line arguments if you suspect our implementation fails to work with your hardware:

  • disable_physical_storage
  • disable_ps2_controller
  • disable_uhci_controller

Because iPXE (unlike GRUB) doesn't support VESA VBE modesetting when booting a multiboot kernel, you might not see any output, so add the boot_mode=text argument as well to boot into VGA text mode.

Afterwards you will need to enable the console iPXE command by uncommenting the following line in src/config/general.h:

//#define CONSOLE_CMD		/* Console command */

Finally, in the src folder you should run:

make EMBED=../script.ipxe bin/ipxe.usb

After it compiled, you will need to dd the bin/ipxe.usb file to your USB drive.