Topic: Installing SME over network

[Anil Patel]

Hi:

I am using a rackable 1U system (without a cd-rom or floppy). I would like to install SME over the network. I have a Linux server running NFS.

Can somebody point me to any documentation regarding that. Or if someone has already done the above, could you be kind enough to share the installation process/setup on the Linux server as well as the client machine.

- Anil Patel

[Jeff C]

The long and the short of it is this....

While it is theorectically possible to perform a network install, it is a hell of a lot less work to just open the box up and use a spare cdrom until the install is complete.

Hope this helps save you some time and energy.

-jeff

[Anil Patel]

Hi:

Point well taken. But we are deploying about 100 of these appliances and to perform the installation as you suggested would be more tedious.

Any thoughts...

-Anil Patel

[Jeff C]

Absolutely. :>

1) Install on one box with attached CDROM.
2) Image all of the other boxes with Ghost or a similar product
3) Use the spare time to complain about how busy you are :>

In a 100 box rollout there is no way we would build one at a time.  If the hardware is close, an imaged system will save LOTS of hours in the build process and you can simply log in and make the appropriate IP or Admin changes as required for each box.

Thee are a number of products that will let you image on hard drive (or many) from a single drive.  

This way an additional rpms or setup is covered for you in the install.

-jeff

[Michiel]

> 1) Install on one box with attached CDROM.
> 2) Image all of the other boxes with Ghost or a similar product

This was also my first thought, but unless I'm mistaken, you still need a floppy or CD drive to run ghost :-/

[Jeff C]

There are a number of dirve imaging utilities that will allow you to do what you want to do.  Ghost will work for you if you run it on one of your WinX boxes as a master.

My thought would be to build a single box exactly the way you want to deploy it by adding a cdrom to the box for the first install.  

Then remove the drive and image it as a master by installing it as a second drive on a computer you have on your network.

Then take that drive out and plug in the next one and restore the image, and so on.  Obviously this is easier if the box is kept open and all you are doing is plugging in the ribbon cable and the power supply to the drive.

It is simply a process of continuing to replace/reimage the 100 drives until they are all done.  Plug them into your 1U appliance and fire them up.

Still has to be much faster and less prone to errors than building 100 boxes one at a time.

-jeff

[Peter Schubert]

Have a  look at neddix.de:

Floppy-less, CDROM-less network install of SME 5.6:

http://nx.dyndns.info/sme/pxeboot/pxeboot.php


best
Peter

[Ray Mitchell]

Peter
Could you please confirm that location for the network instal HOWTO.

http://nx.dyndns.info/sme/pxeboot/pxeboot.php
does not work for me

Cannot find server or DNS Error
Internet Explorer

Thanks
Ray

[Jimbo]

This might me help you do what you want.

Extract from: http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo@lists.e-smith.org/msg11080.html

"One trick I found that could save a step, and unnecessary coasters.
Instead of burning the original CD, you can loopback mount the ISO and
copy from the mount point to your HD buildroot.

For example (from the directory your ISO is in):

mkdir temp
mount -o loop  foo.iso temp/
cp -R temp/*

This loopback mount is also ideal as you are testing your CD.  One can
loopback mount it in their FTP, NFS or HTTP space and do a network
install from a bootnet floppy.  Once again, saves time and wasted CDRs
as one experiments with the process."

The guy is testing customised sme cds so I assume you can do this with a normal install.

HTH
James

[Jimbo]

The answer was here all the time!

http://www.e-smith.org/faq.php3#5q8

Duh!
James

[Jimbo]

Some more info:

http://www.tech-geeks.org/servers/sme/v5.1.x/README.txt

In order to use the Tech-Geeks.Org Network Installation server, download
the 50NetIns.exe file to your workstation.  Insert a blank floppy disk in
your drive.  Double-click the 50NetIns.exe file and follow the prompts to
create your boot disk.  Once finished, insert your new floppy into your
soon-to-be SME Server and boot it.  Your server should be able to obtain a
DHCP address from your local DHCP Server.  If not, you will need to edit
the KS.CFG file to include your IP information.  See the above FAQ for details.
Just follow the prompts on the server screen to install your server.  As long
as the server auto-detects your network card, the rest should be pretty easy.


To set a static IP for your boot disk, you will need to do the following:
 - Create bootdisk (directions from above)
 - On the floppy, Edit KS.CFG in your favorite text editor
 - Change the existing lines:
   # networking
   network --bootproto dhcp
 - To
   # networking
   network --bootproto static --ip --netmask --gateway --nameserver
 - Example
   network --bootproto static --ip 192.168.1.1 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 192.168.1.2 --nameserver 127.0.0.1
 - Save/Close the file
 - Boot the new server with the floppy.

[Jeff C]

All of these are great ideas, but the original post specified that there was no floppy or cd in the box.

If you're going to have to install a floppy drive, you may as well just install the cd.

I still say image the hard drives :>

-jeff

[Jimbo]

I agree imaging the hdd's would be the easyest way, but you could do the network book thing with pxe see  http://etherboot.sourceforge.net

James

[Anil Patel]

Hi:

Thanks everybody for your help. So far, I have been able to intall using Jeff C's suggestion by imaging the hard drive.

Now with the free time (as Jeff suggested...) I have been trying to install SME5.6 from an NFS server using PXE and TFTP. I have a Redhat 7.3 server with the sme5.6 nfs exported. I also have DHCPD and TFTPD running on the same box.
I can download the pxelinux (initrd.img, vmlinuz) and my kickstart ks.cfg file below:
######
install
nfs --server 10.6.11.1 --dir /usr/local/sme/sme56
skipx
lang en_US
langsupport --default en_US
keyboard us
mouse generic3ps/2 --device psaux
network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp
rootpw --iscrypted $1$GÅûÓøÔèê$jWK/s8WgbjQJRyQUS3B0d1
firewall --disabled
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
timezone --utc America/New_York
bootloader --useLilo
%packages
#@ Base

%post
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event post-install
#####

The installation process is fine until it starts the:
/sbin/loader
I get the RedHat installer and once the installation, post installation is complete I get the following anaconda error:

File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 634 in
  intf.run(id, dispatch, configFileData)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 356, in run
  self.icw.run(self.runres, configFileData)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 817, in run
  mainloop()
File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/gtk.py", line 2676, in mailoop
  _gtk.gtk-main()
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 532, in handleRenderCallback
  self.currentWindow.renderCallback()
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 125, in renderCallback
  self.intf.icw.nextClicked()
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 423, in nextClicked
  self.setScreen()
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 561, in setScreen
  new_screen = apply(self.currentWindow.getScreen, args)
TypeError: too many arguments; expected 1, got 2

Also, I noticed that once the /sbin/loader was called the next set of screens were not the same as you would if you were installing from the cd-rom.

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated..

Thanks

Regards,

Anil Patel
Jeff C wrote:
>
> All of these are great ideas, but the original post specified
> that there was no floppy or cd in the box.
>
> If you're going to have to install a floppy drive, you may as
> well just install the cd.
>
> I still say image the hard drives :>
>
> -jeff

[Anil Patel]

Finally got it to work. Without CDROM or FLOPPYS... I had the change the kickstart config file to use text mode in the pxelinux.cfg.

If anybody is interested I can outline the entire installation process...

Thanks for everybody's input.

Anil