netboot 0.1.1

PXE provisioning management: render netboot artifacts and drive DHCP for targets

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 (host/MAC/IP), images (what to boot), dhcp zones (the network a target lives on) and content repos (where artifacts are fetched/served from). For a given target netboot builds a render context and produces netboot files from Jinja2 or shell-style templates, resolving names by MAC, hostname or IP with sensible fallbacks. Backends and behaviour are extensible through an event-hook system and pluggable DhcpServer handlers.

Install

pip install netboot            # provides the `pixie` command
# or, from a checkout:
pip install .

Optional extras:

Extra	Enables
netboot[config]	YAML config loading for the CLI (pyyaml)
netboot[dns]	DNS resolution of hostname targets (dnspython)
netboot[docs]	Build the documentation site (mkdocs)

Built on duho (CLI/args/command discovery), pathlib_next (URI-aware paths), yaconfiglib (layered YAML), and Jinja2. IP/MAC/DNS helpers are vendored in-tree (netboot._netutils).

CLI

The command is pixie (PXE is pronounced "pixie"); netboot is the library package it drives.

# Initiate the PXE process for a target (render artifacts + arm DHCP):
pixie initiate my-host

# Complete it (post-boot cleanup, disarm DHCP):
pixie complete my-host

Global options:

Option	Purpose
-c, --config PATH	Explicit config file (yaml/cfg)
--baseconfig DIR	Base config directory to search (default ./config)
-l, --load-module M	Import module(s) before building netboot (config/hook deps)
--cmdspath PATH	Extra directories/packages to search for commands

A target is looked up by exact id, or by hostname prefix / MAC / IP.

Library

from netboot import Pixie

pixie = Pixie(**config)                  # config: the merged YAML mapping
target = pixie.lookup_target("my-host")
ctx = pixie.make_context(target)         # render context (image + dhcpzone + target)
print(ctx.render("boot.ipxe.j2"))        # render a template against the context
pixie.initialize(target)                 # arm DHCP for the target
pixie.complete(target)                   # cleanup once installed

Extending

• Hooks. Pass hooks=[...] (callables or "module.func" import strings) to Pixie(...). Each hook f(event, netboot, value, kwargs) -> value is called for every PixieEvent and may transform the value flowing through it — used to customise lookup, context construction and the init/complete lifecycle.
• DHCP backends. Subclass netboot.dhcp.DhcpServer; the lowercased class name is the URI scheme it handles (class dnsmasq(DhcpServer) → dnsmasq://...). Import your plugin module via --load-module so it is registered before the config builds the zones.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.