Re: [arch-general] [*] Re: Building netboot images
On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 07:32:18PM +0530, Nilesh Govindarajan wrote: On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Piyush P Kurur p...@cse.iitk.ac.in wrote: What I suggest is this - http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Diskless_network_boot_NFS_root I saw the wiki. I am not looking for a diskless boot. We have here a pxelinux boot loader that allows people to select one of the distros that we mirror here and install it on their machine by just connecting to ethernet port here and enabling PXE boot. One of the images is that of arch. I definitely *do not* want the following (1) NFS mounts: I prefer to have all the stuff required for a netinstall in the initrd image. The actual packages will come from the local mirror. NFS is unnecessarily compilcated and would mean I have to also run an NFS server and cannot get away with a tftp server. (2) No custom kernel: I don't want a custom kernel. The standard kernel should be made to work. Besides I thought this is a good oppurtunity to hack a bit on image creation process. Best ppk
Re: [arch-general] [*] Re: Building netboot images
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 10:06 PM, Piyush P Kurur ppk wrote: On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 07:32:18PM +0530, Nilesh Govindarajan wrote: On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Piyush P Kurur p...@cse.iitk.ac.in wrote: What I suggest is this - http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Diskless_network_boot_NFS_root I saw the wiki. I am not looking for a diskless boot. We have here a pxelinux boot loader that allows people to select one of the distros that we mirror here and install it on their machine by just connecting to ethernet port here and enabling PXE boot. One of the images is that of arch. I definitely *do not* want the following (1) NFS mounts: I prefer to have all the stuff required for a netinstall in the initrd image. The actual packages will come from the local mirror. NFS is unnecessarily compilcated and would mean I have to also run an NFS server and cannot get away with a tftp server. (2) No custom kernel: I don't want a custom kernel. The standard kernel should be made to work. Besides I thought this is a good oppurtunity to hack a bit on image creation process. Best ppk So you want to do a templated installation something like that of kickstart availalbe in Fedora, Redhat and CentOS. It is possible using Arch Installation Framework but it is under development and not meant for use in production. I have a small idea but I don't know if it will work or not. If it works, it will be something great. You have to hack mkinitcpio but in a different manner. Add pacman.conf, mirrorlist (with your local LAN mirror on the top, if you have one), a static version of pacman into an mkinitcpio image using a kernel which will be used for netbooting. Then in the sysinit, after adding the devices by udev, and network config, run the pacman commands to install the OS via FTP mirror which will preferrably use your LAN mirror. Once you've prepared the basic kernel and the initrd, boot using PXE, and let syslinux (or whatever PXE loader you're using) load our custom initrd and kernel from TFTP server. When this runs on the client machine, then pacman will execute the install commands. -- Nilesh Govindarajan Site Server Administrator www.itech7.com
Re: [arch-general] [*] Re: Building netboot images
On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 22:33:16 +0530 Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote: So you want to do a templated installation something like that of kickstart availalbe in Fedora, Redhat and CentOS. It is possible using Arch Installation Framework but it is under development and not meant for use in production. aif is the installation software which is pretty stable and has officially replaced the old /arch/setup and /arch/quickinst scripts since august last year. (it also supports automated installations) it has however nothing to do with the actual creation of images. we (arch-releng) use the archiso tool to do that, there's also the unofficial archboot scripts which are meant for creation of lightweight, early-userspace-only images. Dieter
Re: [arch-general] [*] Re: Building netboot images
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Dieter Plaetinck die...@plaetinck.be wrote: On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 22:33:16 +0530 Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote: So you want to do a templated installation something like that of kickstart availalbe in Fedora, Redhat and CentOS. It is possible using Arch Installation Framework but it is under development and not meant for use in production. aif is the installation software which is pretty stable and has officially replaced the old /arch/setup and /arch/quickinst scripts since august last year. (it also supports automated installations) it has however nothing to do with the actual creation of images. we (arch-releng) use the archiso tool to do that, there's also the unofficial archboot scripts which are meant for creation of lightweight, early-userspace-only images. Dieter Okay. I read about AIF in the forum (Google search), so was unsure about its stability. Isn't there any documentation about AIF ? -- Nilesh Govindarajan Site Server Administrator www.itech7.com
Re: [arch-general] [*] Re: Building netboot images
On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 23:07:07 +0530 Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Dieter Plaetinck die...@plaetinck.be wrote: On Mon, 8 Mar 2010 22:33:16 +0530 Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote: So you want to do a templated installation something like that of kickstart availalbe in Fedora, Redhat and CentOS. It is possible using Arch Installation Framework but it is under development and not meant for use in production. aif is the installation software which is pretty stable and has officially replaced the old /arch/setup and /arch/quickinst scripts since august last year. (it also supports automated installations) it has however nothing to do with the actual creation of images. we (arch-releng) use the archiso tool to do that, there's also the unofficial archboot scripts which are meant for creation of lightweight, early-userspace-only images. Dieter Okay. I read about AIF in the forum (Google search), so was unsure about its stability. Isn't there any documentation about AIF ? not as much as i would want, but: http://projects.archlinux.org/aif.git/tree/README in the repository there are also examples, (very brief) design notes, etc. and of course: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Official_Arch_Linux_Install_Guide Dieter
