Master VM cannot pxe boot Slave VM

Question

I have two virtual machines: master VM and slave VM (they are not nested).

Both are created using KVM and libvirt. (Using Vagrant to simulate the virtual environment)

I am trying to PXE boot the slave VM via the master VM. However, when I boot it, it freezes and doesn't do anything.

I think there might be some problem concerning the MAC address of the slave VM.

How can I fix this? And how is MAC address related to PXE booting? Isn't it booting over the network? Meaning, ip address?

How can I ensure that there is a valid connection between the master and VM for PXE booting. Because I gave the slave a static ip address in Vagrantfile but the master cannot ping it but I am assuming that it cannot ping it unless it is deployed with an OS is my assumption correct?

Please help me I'm confused here and just a beginner in Linux.

Answer 1

PXE booting a client machine involves two components on the network. First the client runs DHCP to get itself an IP address. Depending on how it is configured, the DHCP server may use the client's MAC address to decide what IP address to give out (eg if you have fixed IP<->MAC address table in the DHCP config). Along with the chosen IP address, the DHCP server sends back options telling the client how to configure the PXE boot process - this is the IP address of a TFTPBOOT server, and a filename to load from it. The TFTPBOOT server doesn't care what the MAC address of the client is - it just serves up whatever file the client requests.

You mentioned that you gave the client machine a static IP address when setting it up - this would be rather odd because PXE booting involves using DHCP to get the IP address and the TFTPBOOT server details.