Hi Sundar,
On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 14:23 -0800, Sundar Yamunachari wrote:
> pxe and DHCP is the only way to install OpenSolaris on X86 right now.
Right,
> What is the environment you have when you are booting PV guests.
At the moment, jumpstart just uses NFS from the dom0 - PV installs get
passed an nfs path to the jumpstart sysidcfg file, and the miniroot from
the install image. We then use pygrub to boot this image.
this example from virt-install(1):
# virt-install \
--paravirt \
--name demo \
--ram 500 \
--file /export/guests/demo/images/demo.img \
--file-size 6 \
--nographics \
--mac=00:16:3e:2f:8a:1a \
--location
nfs:netinstall:/export/s10u6/combined.s10x_u6wos/latest \
--autocf=nfs:netinstall:/export/guests/demo/autocf
> What protocols does it support?
Well, this is all from the Solaris host, (the dom0) so theoretically,
any protocol, just that the guest needs to get bootstrapped manually
from what I can tell.
> DHCP controls what boot programs the clients
> will get along with IP address. You can tweak DHCP entries and use a
> different boot file that is suitable for PV client. Further menu.lst
> provides the information about the kernel and install programs needed to
> perform the install. You need to have some mechanism to get that
> information.
Is menu.lst the only way to obtain this information?
My problems booting a HVM guest continue:
> > [1] the guest then fails in the network/physical start method I think,
> > where an interface isn't plumbed automatically, dropping me to
> > single-user maintenance mode. This is weird, since I'm able to manually
> > plumb the xnf0 interface, and obtain a dhcp address. More investigation
> > needed my end, I admit.
I still can't work out what's going on here (and diagnosing a half-built
miniroot is really painful!)
- it looks like smf_netstrategy() in /lib/svc/share/smf_include is
highly suspicious: it seems to only set $_INIT_NET_IF in the case where
the root filesystem obtained via /sbin/netstrategy is "nfs" or
"cachefs". In AI, we have a "ufs" root filesystem, so never set this
evironment variable.
That said, I can't work out how non-xen HVM installs are able to plumb
their primary interface. Have any of you guys tried out HVM guests with
AI yet?
cheers,
tim
