Foreman configures the boot_server option on Smart Proxy (YAML configuration file) automatically via the installer, this can be modified with --foreman-proxy-tftp-servername option.

When this configuration value is not present, Foreman uses Smart Proxy hostname as the boot server entry. It converts it to IP address, therefore DNS configuration must be correctly setup on the Server.

We will likely implement it as an option for subnet "Do not pass next-server". When checked, all new reservations for this subnets will not include "supersede server.next-server" option. Does this work for you? Or would you like to have this on per-host level?

Lukas Zapletal wrote:

Foreman configures the boot_server option on Smart Proxy (YAML configuration file) automatically via the installer, this can be modified with --foreman-proxy-tftp-servername option.

When this configuration value is not present, Foreman uses Smart Proxy hostname as the boot server entry. It converts it to IP address, therefore DNS configuration must be correctly setup on the Server.

We will likely implement it as an option for subnet "Do not pass next-server". When checked, all new reservations for this subnets will not include "supersede server.next-server" option. Does this work for you? Or would you like to have this on per-host level?

Option for the subnet would work just fine.

Lukas Zapletal wrote:

Hello all, it is now possible to prevent Foreman from sending DHCP filename option. This can be done easily by using PXE Loader flag set to "None". Then filename option will be used as defined in the dhcpd.conf on global level.

I am closing this since this is available in Foreman 1.15+.

Hmm, perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but this feature doesn't quite seem to align with request. I did verify that using PXE Loader = None the filename will use global, but nextServer is still set which is what I understood this issue to be about.

I still had to use the workaround of manually adjusting the template to comment out nextServer in order to get my setup to boot and use global next-server, although my root cause was slightly different than OP.

Isn't it sufficient to not select a TFTP proxy? My reading of the boot_server function is that it then returns nil and the smart proxy will not write the entry. Note that I didn't test this.

Well, it does not work and the bug is valid. I have tried this today with develop, created a host with None PXELoader and the entry was created with next-server:

host mac52c613dd1542.nat.lan {
  dynamic;
  hardware ethernet 52:c6:13:dd:15:42;
  fixed-address 192.168.99.221;
        supersede server.next-server = c0:a8:64:01;
        supersede host-name = "mac52c613dd1542.nat.lan";
}