Good day, SystemImager People!
 
I had the good fortune to have help with my implementation of SystemImager 
today. David has oodles more clue about Linux and computers in general than I 
do, so it was great having his help. Although we did not get everything set up, 
David helped me get around some brick walls and I do feel like we've moved 
forward quite a bit.
 
After finding out how old the official Ubuntu repository's package of 
systemimager is, I added the systemimager.org repository and installed those 
packages (they installed just fine, though I did have to disable to repository 
afterwards cause it tried to update some other things on my system) though 
systemconfigurator did not come have a newer version on that repository. I'm 
now running 3.6.2-2 on the server and the client.
 
RE: STATIC vs. DYNAMIC IPs
 
So, the way I understand it (which is admittedly not much), having Static IPs 
would allow the systemimager client to look up its hostname and autoinstall 
script from the server's /etc/hosts when doing an autoinstall, something that 
can't happen if we're using Dynamic IPs. Is there another way for the client to 
get this information? Am I completely missing the point, here?
 
The main problem I have is that the documentation (and indeed the program 
itself) assumes that the implementer has complete control over the network and 
talks about everything from that point of view. My situation is a little unique 
in that I don't have control over the DHCP server, and I'm trying to figure out 
how that affects the way I should be reading the documentation.
 
RE: LOCAL.CFG and (DHCP Server == SystemImager Server) ASSUMPTION
 
So, we figured out (because it said so clearly on some error screen) that the 
main reason autoinstall hasn't worked for me yet is because the client doesn't 
know where the server is. It cannot access the local hard disk to read 
/local.cfg, so it assumes the DHCP server is the SystemImager server which is 
wrong.
 
RE: SI_MKAUTOINSTALLDISKETTE
 
In an effort to boot to the autoinstall process with a local.cfg file that 
clearly states where the server is, we found out why si_mkautoinstalldiskette 
doesn't work. After getting an error message complaining about the lack of a 
"linux" file, we renamed the "KERNEL" file on the disk to "linux" and booted it 
again to be greeted by a very joyful and happy "Loading linux......." screen, 
then it continued gradually to ".......Ready" which would have been great if it 
didn't continue on to say "ran out of input data" and "--System halted".
 
Examining exactly what was being done by si_mkautoinstalldiskette as it created 
the autoinstall floppy revealed an error message when it tried to copy the 
kernel file onto the disk.
 
(I figured out how to point si_mkautoinstalldiskeete at my USB disk drive, btw. 
Instead of --floppy /dev/sda, I told it to make an image file named /dev/sda :) 
.)
 
RE: SI_MKAUTOINSTALLCD
 
We then figured that since mkautoinstalldiskette is no longer in vogue, we 
could make an autoinstall cd! (This would only work on the 210Ls, and we only 
had an image for the 170Ls, but at this point I just really want something to 
image! Even if it won't boot correctly afterwards, I just want to see it 
succesfully connect to the server and go through the actual autoinstall 
process.)
 
Except, we can't for the life of us figure out how to attach a local.cfg file 
to the autoinstall cd. We've even added local.cfg to both the / and the 
/isolinux directories, hoping they would be available to the autoinstall, to no 
avail.
 
 
 
I feel I'm forgetting something crucial about which brick walls we came up 
against, but I'm in a hurry and need to finish up this e-mail.
 
 
 
Any insights into any of this would be heartily welcomed!
 
I'm going to be gone at a conference for the rest of the work week, but I may 
have the pleasure of David's help next week sometime. I wouldn't have made this 
much progress without him
 
I hope this finds you all having a beautiful day!
 
Simón

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