Installation guide

Chapter 15. Network booting with libvirt

Guest virtual machines can be booted with PXE enabled. PXE allows guest virtual machines to boot

and load their configuration off the network itself. This section demonstrates some basic

configuration steps to configure PXE guests with libvirt.

This section does not cover the creation of boot images or PXE servers. It is used to explain how to

configure libvirt, in a private or bridged network, to boot a guest virtual machine with PXE booting

enabled.

Warning

These procedures are provided only as an example. Ensure that you have sufficient backups

before proceeding.

15.1. Preparing t he boot server

To perform the steps in this chapter you will need:

A PXE Server (DHCP and TFTP) - This can be a libvirt internal server, manually-configured dhcpd

and tftpd, dnsmasq, a server configured by Cobbler, or some other server.

Boot images - for example, PXELINUX configured manually or by Cobbler.

15.1.1. Set t ing up a PXE boot server on a privat e libvirt net work

This example uses the default network. Perform the following steps:

Pro ced u re 15.1. Co n f ig u ring t h e PXE b o o t server

1. Place the PXE boot images and configuration in /var/l i b/tftp.

2. Run the following commands:

# virsh net-destroy default

# virsh net-edit default

3. Edit the <i p> element in the configuration file for the default network to include the

appropriate address, network mask, DHCP address range, and boot file, where

BOOT_FILENAME represents the file name you are using to boot the guest virtual machine.

<dhcp>

</dhcp>

</ip>

4. Boot the guest using PXE (refer to Section 15.2, “ Booting a guest using PXE” ).

15.2. Boot ing a guest using PXE

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