netboot

PXE provisioning management. Describe your netboot targets, images and DHCP zones in config, and let netboot render the per-target boot artifacts and arm (or disarm) DHCP for a machine as it enters and leaves the install process.

netboot is a small, hook-driven engine. A YAML config declares:

• targets — a machine, keyed by hostname / MAC / IP;
• images — what a target boots;
• dhcp zones — the network a target lives on, and the DHCP backend(s) for it;
• repos / resources — where boot artifacts are fetched from and served.

For a given target netboot builds a render context and produces netboot files from templates — Jinja2 and shell-style built in; mako, Liquid, Handlebars, Mustache, ERB and EPP through tplx — resolving template names by MAC, hostname or IP with sensible fallbacks. Behaviour is extensible through an event-hook system and pluggable DHCP backends (from dhcpctl).

Install

pip install netboot            # the library
pip install netboot[config]    # ...plus what the `pixie` CLI needs to read a config
# or, from a checkout:
pip install .

Extra	Enables
netboot[config]	YAML config loading for the CLI (pyyaml)
netboot[mako]	*.mako templates (tplx[mako])
netboot[liquid]	*.liquid templates (tplx[liquid])
netboot[handlebars]	*.hbs / *.handlebars templates (tplx[handlebars])
netboot[mustache]	*.mustache templates (tplx[mustache])
netboot[dns]	The dnspython resolver backend (best coverage; without it hostname targets still resolve via the system/nslookup fallbacks)
netboot[kea]	The kea:// DHCP backend (requests)
netboot[dhcpd]	The dhcpd:// DHCP backend over OMAPI (pypureomapi)
netboot[winrm]	windhcp:// over WinRM (hostctl[winrm])
netboot[ssh]	windhcp:// over ssh, and dnsmasq:// with remote sftp:// paths and reload (hostctl[ssh])
netboot[docs]	Build this documentation site (mkdocs)

Built on duho (CLI/args/command discovery), pathapi and uripath (URI-aware paths), anycfg (layered YAML), tplx (templates) and dhcpctl (DHCP servers). IP/MAC/DNS helpers come from netimps.

Where next

• CLI — the initiate / complete commands and global options.
• Configuration — the shape of the YAML config.
• Extending — hooks and custom DHCP backends.
• API Reference — the Pixie engine and context objects.