This role helps with fingerprinting and reporting the hardware of systems which can be booted via PXE.
Suppose you have a rack with several servers and want to get their specifications, e.g. MAC addresses of NICs and
serial numbers of SSDs and HDDs. Once this role and its dependencies have been run, you power on the first system, wait
for it to boot via PXE, to automatically fingerprint the hardware with the hwfp script, to report it to the hwfp
service and to finally poweroff the system. Once powered off you power on the next system, wait for it to poweroff and
continue until all systems are done. Then, on the host which executed this role (and runs hwfp service), you go to
directory /var/lib/hwfp and find all system specifications in sub directories where each sub directory has the specs
of a single system. For example, this includes the output of dmesg, find /dev, ipmitool, ip addr, ip link,
lshw, lsmod and lspci. Directory names consists of timestamps, indicating when the hwfp service received the
specs and indicating to you which system has which specification, e.g. lowest timestamp has specs of first booted system
etc.
hwfp service to external networks or the internet. It has no authentication mechanism, transport
security or security hardening. It is only meant to be run on internal networks.
:warning:
Tested OS images
- Cloud image (
amd64) of Debian 10 (Buster) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Debian 11 (Bullseye) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Debian 12 (Bookworm) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Debian 13 (Trixie) - Cloud image (
amd64) of CentOS 7 (Core) - Cloud image (
amd64) of CentOS 8 (Stream) - Cloud image (
amd64) of CentOS 9 (Stream) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Fedora Cloud Base 40 - Cloud image (
amd64) of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) - Cloud image (
amd64) of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)
Available on Ansible Galaxy in Collection jm1.cloudy.
This role uses module(s) from collection jm1.pkg. To install this collection you may follow the
steps described in README.md using the provided requirements.yml.
| Name | Default value | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
distribution_id |
depends on operating system | false | List which uniquely identifies a distribution release, e.g. [ 'Debian', '10' ] for Debian 10 (Buster) |
pxe_hwfp_daemon_host |
undefined | true | IP address on which the hwfp service will listen |
pxe_hwfp_daemon_group |
nogroup |
false | UNIX group that the hwfp service is executed as |
pxe_hwfp_daemon_port |
8000 | false | TCP port on which the hwfp service will listen |
pxe_hwfp_daemon_user |
hwfp |
false | UNIX user that the hwfp service is executed as |
pxe_hwfp_distribution_filename_map |
{ x86_64: { UEFI: 'hwfp/amd64/debian-installer/amd64/bootnetx64.efi', BIOS: 'hwfp/amd64/pxelinux.0' } } |
false | Path for use in filename parameter of dhcpd.conf so that PXE clients know where to find bootable files on the tftp server |
pxe_hwfp_files_amd64 |
https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz |
false | Where to download Debian's netboot files which will be used to boot BIOS based systems with PXELINUX and UEFI based systems with GRUB2 |
pxe_hwfp_kernel_parameters |
'' |
false | Additional kernel parameters which will be passed to the kernel when booting via PXE to run the hwfp script |
pxe_hwfp_tftpd_root |
depends on distribution_id |
false | Base path which is served by tftpd, e.g. /srv/tftp on Debian and /var/lib/tftpboot on Red Hat Enterprise Linux |
pxe_hwfp_virtualenv |
/opt/hwfp_venv/ |
false | Base path where the Python environment for and with the hwfp service is installed to |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
jm1.cloudy.dhcpd |
Installs a dhcpd service which is required to publish the next-server which PXE clients use to find the tftp server. This role is optional. |
jm1.cloudy.tftpd |
Installs a tftpd service which is required during PXE network boot to load e.g. the kernel and initrd files and then run the hwfp script. This role is optional. |
jm1.pkg.setup |
Installs necessary software for module jm1.pkg.meta_pkg from collection jm1.pkg. This role is called automatically, manual execution is NOT required. |
For a complete example on how to configure dhcpd, tftpd and hwfp services, refer to host
lvrt-lcl-session-srv-300-hwfp-server-debian11 from the provided examples inventory. Additionally,
hosts lvrt-lcl-session-srv-310-hwfp-client-debian11-bios and lvrt-lcl-session-srv-311-hwfp-client-debian11-uefi can be
booted manually (once provisioned with Ansible) to showcase and debug the whole poweron-fingerprint-report-poweroff
cycle. The top-level README.md describes how hosts can be provisioned with playbook
playbooks/site.yml.
For instructions on how to run Ansible playbooks have look at Ansible's Getting Started Guide.
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
See LICENSE.md to see the full text.