This guide was created very quickly to help out GitHub user sqsous in GitHub Discussion #3716. As such it may contain a few more grammar errors and spelling mistakes. As most guides covering this topic are outdated it felt right to publish it here.

SELinux is in the way per-default, for the purpose of this guide it will be treated as permissive.

Steps:

1. Download CentOS 9
2. Setup libvirt VM guest via ISO with
   • the e1000e network card: Fedora 17 can’t handle virtio
   • a physical drive or dedicated partition: Fedora 17 can’t handle virtio
3. dnf install epel-release
4. dnf install cobbler
5. dnf install dhcp-server tftp-server ipxe-bootimgs-x86
6. Disable selinux: Edit /etc/selinux/config and set SELINUX=permissive
7. reboot
8. Set the following settings:
   • enable_ipxe: true
   • manage_dhcp: true
   • manage_dhcp_v4: true
   • next_server_v4: <your ip>
   • server: <ip of cobbler server>
9. Edit the dhcp.template to fit your network range and add the iPXE config above all other

   ...
   match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient";
   
   # iPXE
   if exists user-class and option user-class = "iPXE" {
       filename "ipxe/default.ipxe";
   }
   else if option system-arch = 00:00 {
       filename "undionly.pxe";
   }
   # Legacy
   else if option system-arch = 00:00 {
   ...
   else if option system-arch = 00:06 {
   ...
   else if option system-arch = 00:02 {
   

10. Enable the Cobbler system daemon: systemctl enable --now cobblerd
11. Create network bootable bootloaders: cobbler mkloaders
12. Create the folders for the downloaded ISOs:
    • mkdir /mnt/iso-files
    • mkdir /mnt/iso-mounted
13. Download the Ubuntu 18.04 installer ISO: wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic-updates/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso
14. Rename the installer to ubuntu-18-04-cdinstall.iso
15. Downloaded Fedora 17 DVD image: wget https://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/17/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-17-x86_64-DVD.iso
16. Mount the ISOs via fstab

    /mnt/iso-files/Fedora-17-x86_64-DVD.iso /mnt/iso-mounted/fedora-17/ iso9660 loop,ro 0 0
    /mnt/iso-files/ubuntu-18-04-cdinstall.iso /mnt/iso-mounted/ubuntu-18-04/ iso9660 loop,ro 0 0
    

17. Apply the updated fstab file with: systemctl daemon-reload
18. Import Fedora: cobbler import --name="fedora-17" --path="/mnt/iso-mounted/fedora-17"
19. Import Ubuntu: cobbler import --name="ubuntu-18-04" --path="/mnt/iso-mounted/ubuntu-18-04" --arch="x86_64"
20. Fix bug RedHat Bugzilla 1029978 with adjusting the kernel options: cobbler distro edit --name="fedora-17-x86_64" --kernel-options="tree=http://@@http_server@@/cblr/links/fedora-17-x86_64 inst.stage2=http://@@http_server@@/cblr/links/fedora-17-x86_64"
21. cobbler sync
22. Start the TFTP server: systemctl enable --now tftp.socket
23. Configure the firewall: firewall-cmd --add-service=http && firewall-cmd --add-service=tftp && firewall-cmd --runtime-to-permanent
24. Comment out the mirror settings in /var/lib/cobbler/templates/sample.seed
25. Boot client via ipxe

At this point the clients should be able to install Fedora 17 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS without any error messages and without doing anything but selecting the OS in the iPXE boot menu.

P.S.: In case you find typos and/or grammar mistakes just open an Issue or open a PR.