Re: Remote management of the default boot option?

[Vanush Misha Paturyan]

On Dec 13 2022 14:49:41 +0100, Marek Kozlowski wrote:
> :-)
> 
> I have a group of hosts with several OSes (including Linux) installed. Those
> are placed in several, sometimes distant, places.
> 
> What I'm interested in is:
> to have some central database that allow specifying that for the nearest
> bootup:
> - workstations A, B, C and D should start by default Linux,
> - workstations E, F, G and H should start by default Windows 7,
> - other workstations should start by default Windows 10.
> I mean getting the 'default' option by some kind of a DHCP-like request to a
> centrally managed database.
> 
> Unfortunately I cannot find such a feature. Did I miss something or there is
> no such a possibility? :-(

I have not done it myself with Grub, but looking at the [1] it looks like it is 
possible to configure Grub to retrieve its configuration file from a TFTP 
server, and that the name of the file it will look for will depend on the MAC 
address, or the IP address (or the parts of) of the workstation that is being 
booted.

But it might be easier to achieve what you are looking for via some 
conviguration management tool, like Ansible, and re-generate the grub.cfg file 
on the hosts themselves, without making your boot process depend on the network 
being there (what going to happend to your workstations if, for example, your 
TFTP or DHCP server goes down? I personally would prefer them to boot into 
something, even if it is without a network, than being stuck in the grub 
emergency shell).

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/Network.html

Cheers,

Misha
-- 
Vanush "Misha" Paturyan
Senior Technical Officer
Computer Science Department
Eolas Bulding
Maynooth University
Maynooth

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