3. Install and configure TFTP

After a PXE client gets its IP and subnet information from the DHCP server, it will move forward and contact next-server via TFTP. In our case this server will again be our master node, which has the IP 192.168.16.1 in that subnet. Now we need to create the necessary TFTP server to host kernel and initial ram disks which are then booted from.

1. Install the TFTP server and client

   [root@master ~]# yum install tftp-server tftp
   

2. Enable the daemon

   [root@master ~]# systemctl enable tftp
   [root@master ~]# systemctl status tftp
   

TFTP server will be started when a socket is created with port 69. You can try this by connecting to it locally.

[root@master ~]# tftp localhost
tftp> get test
Error code 1: File not found

You will see that the daemon has started by itself.

[root@master ~]# systemctl status tftp
● tftp.service - Tftp Server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/tftp.service; indirect; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2019-02-11 15:11:58 EST; 2s ago
     Docs: man:in.tftpd
 Main PID: 11652 (in.tftpd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/tftp.service
           └─11652 /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /var/lib/tftpboot

Feb 11 15:11:58 master systemd[1]: Started Tftp Server.

Note

Activating daemons with sockets is a systemd feature. Previously, a common way of setting up tftp was running the server as a child of the xinetd service. This required enabling the tftp server in /etc/xinetd.d/tftp, installing, enabling and starting xinetd.