• servers
• HardwarePrep
• DellOptiplex9020Micro

So you've just received a brand-new secondhand one of these things off Ebay, what do we need to do to it before use?

BIOS/UEFI settings

Getting in there

• Mash F12 during POST to get the one-time boot target menu, you can access the BIOS/UEFI from there
• If you get stuck in Windows because the keyboard wasn't detected fast enough, you can get to the desktop and then:
  • Hit the Windows key, type "UEFI", then select Change Advanced Start-up Options
  • Restart Now with the Advanced Startup button

  • Then from that boot menu go to Troubleshoot, Advanced Options, UEFI Firmware Settings, Restart

Update the BIOS to the latest version

• Use this guide: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-au/000131486/update-the-dell-bios-in-a-linux-or-ubuntu-environment#updatebios2015

• Despite the usual Dell docs saying you need to make a DOS boot disk and run the flash updater app from there, it turns out that the BIOS Flash Update target (also on the one-time boot menu) can read the 9020MA19.exe file from a FAT32 filesystem on a USB stick just fine

• Not sure if this only works in UEFI mode or not, but I kinda don't care because we want to be in UEFI mode

• This applies to systems made from 2015 or later
• The latest BIOS update for the Optiplex 9020M (as of 2023-04-10) is version A19, released 2019-07-19

Grab the MAC address

Get the LOM MAC Address from Settings, General, System Info

You'll need this later when configuring PXE booting.

Change BIOS/UEFI settings

The first thing you want to do is set it to full UEFI mode, no legacy here.

Then all these settings:

• General
  • Boot Sequence
    • Select UEFI boot list
  • Advanced Boot Options
    • Disable Legacy OPROMs
  • UEFI Boot Path Security
    • Set to Never
  • Date/Time
    • Set clock to approx correct for UTC time
• System Configuration
  • Integrated NIC
    • Enable UEFI Network Stack
    • Enabled w/ PXE
  • SATA Operation
    • AHCI
  • SMART Reporting
    • Disabled, we don't need it
  • Audio
    • Disable all audio, we don't need it
• Security
  • TPM Security
    • Check everything except Clear
    • Activated
  • CPU XD support
    • Enabled
• Secure Boot
  • Secure Boot Enable
    • Disabled
• Performance
  • Multi-core support: All
  • Speedstep: Enabled
  • C-states: Enabled
  • Limit CPUID: Disabled
  • Turboboost: Enabled
• Power Management
  • AC Recovery: Power On
  • Deep Sleep Control: Disabled
  • USB Wake Support: Enable USB wake from Standby
  • Wake on LAN/WLAN: LAN with PXE Boot
  • Block Sleep: Enable blocking of sleep
• POST Behaviour
  • Keyboard Errors: Disable error detection
• Virtualisation support
  • Enable VT
  • Enable VT-d
  • Enable Trusted Execution

Reboot and go back in again.

• Boot only from IPv4 with NIC (PXE boot)

Prepare for PXE booting

1. Choose an IP address, the DHCP server will be used to configure the server when it comes up
2. Choose a name, and go assign the name to address mapping in the DNS zone

3. Record the allocation in the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bUR4y21wuCVRCpQcBbP85wGAWELrVjo2_tNJ7la495A/edit#gid=0

4. Configure the DHCP server with the static address reservation

   • In Mikrotik Winbox it's in IP -> DHCP Server -> Leases. You can open an existing static lease and Copy it. Make sure to edit the:

     • IP
     • Name
     • MAC address
     • Comment

   • In Mikrotik CLI it'd be something like this

     [furinkan@helian] /ip/dhcp-server/lease> add address=192.168.1.256 mac-address=02-99-88-77-66-55 server="dhcp general" comment=persica42

   • If using dnsmasq in Pihole we add a custom config file like /etc/dnsmasq.d/02-pihole-dhcp-persica-cluster.conf

     dhcp-host=02:99:88:77:66:55,set:persica,192.168.1.256,persica42,5m
     # one dhcp-host line per host
     dhcp-boot=tag:persica,grub/grubx64.efi,illustrious.thighhighs.top,192.168.1.12

     Note that things are a bit different here, we specify boot options per-host rather than at a subnet level like on Mikrotik

     • Run pihole restartdns after making changes

You should now be able to PXE boot the box. It'll get an address from DHCP, then hit the next-server for PXE executable which is grubx64.efi

Grub will download its menu from the TFTP server via baked-in path, which defines the kernel and initrd to download and execute. That's typically a Linux kernel, with cmdline options to start a kickstarted install. Kickstart will download its kickstart.cfg then the magic happens.

Now go put the right bits in the right places, you'll need a kernel and initrd at a minimum, then for auto installs you need a kickstart config (or Debian equivalent): PxeBooting#Putting_the_right_bits_in_the_right_places