Debian 12 Quickstart

Install the basic services

sudo apt install firewalld nfs-kernel-server tftpd-hpa isc-dhcp-server

Note

If you get an error message concerning isc-dhcp-server.service you probably need to configure the network intarface that isc-dhcp-server will listen to. Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure isc-dhcp-server and enter the name of your cluster’s private network interface (e.g. enp2s0). After that, you might also need to run sudo systemctl enable isc-dhcp-server.

Install Warewulf and dependencies

sudo apt install build-essential curl unzip

sudo apt install git golang libnfs-utils libgpgme-dev libassuan-dev


mkdir ~/git
cd ~/git
git clone https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf.git
cd warewulf
git checkout main # or switch to a tag like 'v4.5.8'
make all && sudo make install

Configure firewalld

Restart firewalld to register the added service file, add the service to the default zone, and reload.

sudo systemctl restart firewalld
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service warewulf
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service dhcp
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service nfs
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service tftp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Configure the controller

Edit the file /etc/warewulf/warewulf.conf and ensure that you’ve set the appropriate configuration parameters. Here are some of the defaults for reference assuming that 192.168.200.1 is the IP address of your cluster’s private network interface:

ipaddr: 192.168.200.1
netmask: 255.255.255.0
network: 192.168.200.0
warewulf:
  port: 9873
  secure: false
  update interval: 60
  autobuild overlays: true
  host overlay: true
  syslog: false
dhcp:
  enabled: true
  range start: 192.168.200.50
  range end: 192.168.200.99
  systemd name: isc-dhcp-server
tftp:
  enabled: true
  systemd name: tftpd-hpa
nfs:
  enabled: true
  export paths:
  - path: /home
        export options: rw,sync
        mount options: defaults
        mount: true
  - path: /opt
        export options: ro,sync,no_root_squash
        mount options: defaults
        mount: false
  systemd name: nfs-server

Note

The DHCP range ends at 192.168.200.99 and as you will see below, the first node static IP address (post boot) is configured to 192.168.200.100.

Start and enable the Warewulf service

# Start and enable the warewulfd service
sudo systemctl enable --now warewulfd

Configure system services automatically

There are a number of services and configurations that Warewulf relies on to operate. If you wish to configure all services, you can do so individually (omitting the --all) will print a help and usage instructions.

sudo wwctl configure --all

Note

If you just installed the system fresh and have SELinux enforcing, you may need to reboot the system at this stage to properly set the contexts of the TFTP contents. After rebooting, you might also need to run $ sudo restorecon -Rv /var/lib/tftpboot/ if there are errors with TFTP still.

Pull and build the VNFS container (including the kernel)

This will pull a basic VNFS container from Docker Hub and import the default running kernel from the controller node and set both in the “default” node profile.

wwctl container import docker://ghcr.io/warewulf/warewulf-debian:12.0 debian-12.0

Set up the default node profile

Node configurations can be set via node profiles. Each node by default is configured to be part of the default node profile, so any changes you make to that profile will affect all nodes.

The following command will set the container we just imported above to the default node profile:

sudo wwctl profile set --yes --container debian-12.0 "default"

Next we set some default networking configurations for the first ethernet device. On modern Linux distributions, the name of the device is not critical, as it will be setup according to the HW address. Because all nodes will share the netmask and gateway configuration, we can set them in the default profile as follows:

sudo wwctl profile set --yes --netdev eth0 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 192.168.200.1 "default"

Once those configurations have been set, you can view the changes by listing the profiles as follows:

sudo wwctl profile list -a

Add a node

Adding nodes can be done while setting configurations in one command. Here we are setting the IP address of eth0 and setting this node to be discoverable, which will then automatically have the HW address added to the configuration as the node boots.

Node names must be unique. If you have node groups and/or multiple clusters, designate them using dot notation.

Note that the full node configuration comes from both cascading profiles and node configurations which always supersede profile configurations.

sudo wwctl node add n0000.cluster --ipaddr 192.168.200.100 --discoverable true

At this point you can view the basic configuration of this node by typing the following:

sudo wwctl node list -a n0000.cluster

To make node changes effective, it is a good practice to update Warewulf overlays with the following command:

sudo wwctl overlay build

Now, turn on your compute node and watch it boot!