I¹m using systemimager 4.0.2 on a cluster of RedHat 4 systems. For the most
part, systemimager works as expected, but I¹ve run into one issue regarding
the boot loader configuration.
The problem is that we have a custom GRUB configuration that includes a GRUB
password that prevents users from modifying the boot loader configuration
unless they know the password.
When using si_prepareclient/si_getimage to get the golden client¹s image,
the menu.lst file is correctly backed up to the image. However, when
loading a machine from this image, the boot loader is not configured using
the configuration file that is part of the image, but rather is using
systemconfigurator to generate it¹s own GRUB configuration file, which does
not have a password. So, this breaks our environment since the boot loader
configuration would have to be fixed manually after imaging or reimaging a
machine.
During my investigation, I found a small but in the autoinstall script that
systemimager made. This is 100% reproducible. The error is when the script
goes to backup any boot loader configuration files that might exist. The
variable ${file} is used where /a/${file} should be used. This is not
really fatal, since the only thing lost is that the boot loader config files
aren¹t properly backed up before systemconfigurator overwrites them. The
fix is in this diff:
--- autoinstallscript.template.orig 2007-11-30 16:32:29.000000000 -0600
+++ autoinstallscript.template 2008-12-17 14:12:09.000000000 -0600
@@ -474,9 +474,9 @@
# Save original boot-loader configurations before running
systemconfigurator
for file in /boot/grub/menu.lst /etc/lilo.conf /etc/grub.conf; do
- if [ -e ${file} ]; then
- if [ ! -e ${file}.pre-systemimager ]; then
- cp -f ${file} ${file}.pre-systemimager
+ if [ -e /a/${file} ]; then
+ if [ ! -e /a/${file}.pre-systemimager ]; then
+ cp -f /a/${file} /a/${file}.pre-systemimager
fi
fi
done
Now, on to the feature request. The problem with the custom GRUB we¹re
using is that systemconfigurator has no way of letting us specify a
boot-time password for GRUB to use. I assume this is because
systemconfigurator is somewhat generic in it¹s configuration support so
rarely used things like boot loader passwords get left out. I was unable to
find anything in systemimager¹s configuration that would override
systemconfigurator¹s runtime options. The fix is to remove the configboot
entry from the sc_options variable that exists immediately above the
systemconfigurator section. This allows systemconfigurator to write the
boot sector, but will retain the GRUB configuration file that was backed up
as part of the image.
My question is that is there some way that the sc_options variable could be
exposed to the autoinstallscript.template file? This way, I won¹t have to
edit the config file each time si_mkautoinstallscript is run after I update
my image.
Nothing fatal, but would make life somewhat easier for me. :-)
Thanks for listening.
--
Jordan Klein ~ Beware of dragons
jkl...@zebraimaging.com ~ for you are crunchy
Linux Systems Administrator ~ and go well with ketchup
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