| # iSCSI booting with U-Boot and iPXE | |
| ## Motivation | |
| U-Boot has only a reduced set of supported network protocols. The focus for | |
| network booting has been on UDP based protocols. A TCP stack and HTTP support | |
| are expected to be integrated in 2018 together with a wget command. | |
| For booting a diskless computer this leaves us with BOOTP or DHCP to get the | |
| address of a boot script. TFTP or NFS can be used to load the boot script, the | |
| operating system kernel and the initial file system (initrd). | |
| These protocols are insecure. The client cannot validate the authenticity | |
| of the contacted servers. And the server cannot verify the identity of the | |
| client. | |
| Furthermore the services providing the operating system loader or kernel are | |
| not the ones that the operating system typically will use. Especially in a SAN | |
| environment this makes updating the operating system a hassle. After installing | |
| a new kernel version the boot files have to be copied to the TFTP server | |
| directory. | |
| The HTTPS protocol provides certificate based validation of servers. Sensitive | |
| data like passwords can be securely transmitted. | |
| The iSCSI protocol is used for connecting storage attached networks. It | |
| provides mutual authentication using the CHAP protocol. It typically runs on | |
| a TCP transport. | |
| Thus a better solution than DHCP/TFTP/NFS boot would be to load a boot script | |
| via HTTPS and to download any other files needed for booting via iSCSI from the | |
| same target where the operating system is installed. | |
| An alternative to implementing these protocols in U-Boot is to use an existing | |
| software that can run on top of U-Boot. iPXE is the "swiss army knife" of | |
| network booting. It supports both HTTPS and iSCSI. It has a scripting engine for | |
| fine grained control of the boot process and can provide a command shell. | |
| iPXE can be built as an EFI application (named snp.efi) which can be loaded and | |
| run by U-Boot. | |
| ## Boot sequence | |
| U-Boot loads the EFI application iPXE snp.efi using the bootefi command. This | |
| application has network access via the simple network protocol offered by | |
| U-Boot. | |
| iPXE executes its internal script. This script may optionally chain load a | |
| secondary boot script via HTTPS or open a shell. | |
| For the further boot process iPXE connects to the iSCSI server. This includes | |
| the mutual authentication using the CHAP protocol. After the authentication iPXE | |
| has access to the iSCSI targets. | |
| For a selected iSCSI target iPXE sets up a handle with the block IO protocol. It | |
| uses the ConnectController boot service of U-Boot to request U-Boot to connect a | |
| file system driver. U-Boot reads from the iSCSI drive via the block IO protocol | |
| offered by iPXE. It creates the partition handles and installs the simple file | |
| protocol. Now iPXE can call the simple file protocol to load Grub. U-Boot uses | |
| the block IO protocol offered by iPXE to fulfill the request. | |
| Once Grub is started it uses the same block IO protocol to load Linux. Via | |
| the EFI stub Linux is called as an EFI application. | |
| ``` | |
| +--------+ +--------+ | |
| | | Runs | | | |
| | U-Boot |=========>| iPXE | | |
| | EFI | | snp.efi| | |
| +--------+ | | DHCP | | | |
| | |<====|********|<=========| | | |
| | DHCP | | | Get IP | | | |
| | Server | | | Address | | | |
| | |====>|********|=========>| | | |
| +--------+ | | Response | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| +--------+ | | HTTPS | | | |
| | |<====|********|<=========| | | |
| | HTTPS | | | Load | | | |
| | Server | | | Script | | | |
| | |====>|********|=========>| | | |
| +--------+ | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| +--------+ | | iSCSI | | | |
| | |<====|********|<=========| | | |
| | iSCSI | | | Auth | | | |
| | Server |====>|********|=========>| | | |
| | | | | | | | |
| | | | | Loads | | | |
| | |<====|********|<=========| | +--------+ | |
| | | | | Grub | | Runs | | | |
| | |====>|********|=========>| |=======>| Grub | | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | Loads | | | |
| | |<====|********|<=========|********|<=======| | +--------+ | |
| | | | | | | Linux | | Runs | | | |
| | |====>|********|=========>|********|=======>| |=====>| Linux | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| +--------+ +--------+ +--------+ +--------+ | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | ~ ~ ~ ~| | |
| ``` | |
| ## Security | |
| The iSCSI protocol is not encrypted. The traffic could be secured using IPsec | |
| but neither U-Boot nor iPXE does support this. So we should at least separate | |
| the iSCSI traffic from all other network traffic. This can be achieved using a | |
| virtual local area network (VLAN). | |
| ## Configuration | |
| ### iPXE | |
| For running iPXE on arm64 the bin-arm64-efi/snp.efi build target is needed. | |
| git clone http://git.ipxe.org/ipxe.git | |
| cd ipxe/src | |
| make bin-arm64-efi/snp.efi -j6 EMBED=myscript.ipxe | |
| The available commands for the boot script are documented at: | |
| http://ipxe.org/cmd | |
| Credentials are managed as environment variables. These are described here: | |
| http://ipxe.org/cfg | |
| iPXE by default will put the CPU to rest when waiting for input. U-Boot does | |
| not wake it up due to missing interrupt support. To avoid this behavior create | |
| file src/config/local/nap.h. | |
| /* nap.h */ | |
| #undef NAP_EFIX86 | |
| #undef NAP_EFIARM | |
| #define NAP_NULL | |
| The supported commands in iPXE are controlled by an include, too. Putting the | |
| following into src/config/local/general.h is sufficient for most use cases. | |
| /* general.h */ | |
| #define NSLOOKUP_CMD /* Name resolution command */ | |
| #define PING_CMD /* Ping command */ | |
| #define NTP_CMD /* NTP commands */ | |
| #define VLAN_CMD /* VLAN commands */ | |
| #define IMAGE_EFI /* EFI image support */ | |
| #define DOWNLOAD_PROTO_HTTPS /* Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol */ | |
| #define DOWNLOAD_PROTO_FTP /* File Transfer Protocol */ | |
| #define DOWNLOAD_PROTO_NFS /* Network File System Protocol */ | |
| #define DOWNLOAD_PROTO_FILE /* Local file system access */ | |
| ## Links | |
| * https://ipxe.org - iPXE open source boot firmware | |
| * https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ - GNU Grub (Grand Unified Bootloader) |