A customized NetBoot ISO with the potential to replace the foreman_bootdisk plugin. The bootdisk plugin is based on the iPXE which has limited support and may beceome dropped from Fedora in future.
With the mkksiso tool from the Lorax package, we can alter the boot ISO to include kernel installation parameters required to provision with Satellite (inst.ks, inst.ks.sendmac …).

Basic workflow

• A user creates a golden kickstart image.
• A user creates a host in their Satellite (and puts it in the boot mode).
• Boot the machine with the iso.
• The machine is trying to fetch provisioning data.
• If the Foreman host is in build mode, start provisioning.
• If not, wait & repeat the step.
• Build the host or timeout after X attempts or Y seconds.

This workflow could replace the functionality of the Foreman Bootdisk plugin.
In later phases, it could also replace the Foreman Discovery.

Known limitations

• Per Smart Proxy's operating system
• EL family only
• For other operating systems, users have to download ISOs manually.

Acceptance Criteria

• New Foreman plugin with this functionality
• Implemented user stories

To verify / Open questions

• HTTPS & Self-signed certificates
• Do we need to support BIOS?
• Secure Boot
• Can we build the net-boot iso by ourselves?
• Auto creation of iso after RHEL kickstart repos are synced

Playground

# As a root

mkdir -p /root/netboot
cd /root/netboot

dnf install -y lorax

wget  -o /root/netboot/netboot.iso https://mirror.stream.centos.org/9-stream/BaseOS/x86_64/iso/CentOS-Stream-9-20240513.0-x86_64-boot.iso

mkksiso -c "inst.ks=http://foreman.lan:8080/unattended/provision inst.ks.sendmac nameserver=192.168.190.1" ./netboot.iso ./customized.iso

virt-install   --name=netboot   --vcpus=4   --memory=4096 \
  --disk size=20   --os-variant=centos-stream9 \
  --network "network=foreman_default,mac=00:aa:bb:38:91:9c" \
  --connect qemu:///system --boot cdrom,hd \
  --cdrom=/path/to/customized.iso