Enterprise Linux Quickstart (Rocky Linux, CentOS, and RHEL)

Install Warewulf

The preferred way to install Warewulf on Enterprise Linux is using the the RPMs published in GitHub releases. For example, to install the v4.5.8 release on Enterprise Linux 9:

dnf install https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf/releases/download/v4.5.8/warewulf-4.5.8-1.el9.x86_64.rpm

Packages are available for el8 and el9.

Install Warewulf from source

If you prefer, you can also install Warewulf from source.

dnf install git
dnf install epel-release
dnf install golang {libassuan,gpgme}-devel unzip tftp-server dhcp nfs-utils ipxe-bootimgs-{x86,aarch64}

git clone https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf.git
cd warewulf
make
make install

Configure firewalld

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

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

Configure Warewulf

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 10.0.0.1/22 is the IP address of your cluster’s private network interface.

ipaddr: 10.0.0.1
netmask: 255.255.252.0
network: 10.0.0.0
warewulf:
  port: 9873
  secure: false
  update interval: 60
  autobuild overlays: true
  host overlay: true
  syslog: false
  datastore: /usr/share
  grubboot: false
dhcp:
  enabled: true
  template: default
  range start: 10.0.1.1
  range end: 10.0.1.255
  systemd name: dhcpd
tftp:
  enabled: true
  tftproot: /var/lib/tftpboot
  systemd name: tftp
  ipxe:
    "00:00": undionly.kpxe
    "00:07": ipxe-snponly-x86_64.efi
    "00:09": ipxe-snponly-x86_64.efi
    00:0B: arm64-efi/snponly.efi
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
container mounts:
- source: /etc/resolv.conf
  dest: /etc/resolv.conf
  readonly: true
paths:
  bindir: /usr/bin
  sysconfdir: /etc
  localstatedir: /var/lib
  ipxesource: /usr/share/ipxe
  srvdir: /var/lib
  firewallddir: /usr/lib/firewalld/services
  systemddir: /usr/lib/systemd/system
  wwoverlaydir: /var/lib/warewulf/overlays
  wwchrootdir: /var/lib/warewulf/chroots
  wwprovisiondir: /var/lib/warewulf/provision
  wwclientdir: /warewulf

Note

The DHCP range from 10.0.1.1 to 10.0.1.255 is dedicated for DHCP during node boot and should not overlap with any static IP address assignments.

Enable and start the Warewulf service

Warewulf provides a service, warewulfd, which responds to node boot requests.

systemctl enable --now warewulfd

Configure system services automatically

There are a number of services and configurations that Warewulf relies on to operate. You can configure all such services with wwctl configure --all.

wwctl configure --all

Note

If you just installed the system fresh and have SELinux enforcing, you may need to run restorecon -Rv /var/lib/tftpboot/ to label files written to q`tftpboot``.

Add a base node image container

This will pull a basic node image 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-rockylinux:9 rockylinux-9 --build
wwctl profile set default --container rockylinux-9

Configure the default node profile

In this example, all nodes share the netmask and gateway configuration, so we can set them in the default profile.

wwctl profile set -y default --netmask=255.255.252.0 --gateway=10.0.0.1
wwctl profile list

Add a node

Adding nodes can be done while setting configurations in one command. Here we set the IP address of the default interface; and setting the node to be discoverable causes the HW address to be added to the configuration as the node boots.

Node names must be unique. If you are managing multiple clusters with overlapping names, distinguish them using dot notation.

wwctl node add n1 --ipaddr=10.0.2.1 --discoverable=true
wwctl node list -a n1

The full node configuration comes from both cascading profiles and node configurations which always supersede profile configurations.

Build overlays

The default configuration should cause node overlays to be built automatically when they are required; but you can build them explicitly, just to be sure.

Warning

Overlay autobuild has been broken at various times prior to v4.5.6; so it’s a reasonable practice to rebuild overlays manually after changes to the cluster.

# you can also supply an `n1` argument to build for the specific node
wwctl overlay build

Boot

Turn on your compute node and watch it boot!