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December 2007

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Subject:
From:
John Summerfield <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
John Summerfield <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:56:51 +0900
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text/plain
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Michael Hannon wrote:
> Hi, folks.  We've been kickstart installations via PXE boots for some
> time, but we're currently using a Debian host for the tftp/PXE stuff.  I
> want to get rid of the Debian system, so I'm trying to set up a similar
> arrangement on a system running SL 5.0.
> 
> I took a look at TUV documentation for this stuff, e.g.:
> 
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Installation_Guide-en-US/s1-netboot-pxe-config.html
> 
> and it says that one way to set this up is to use:
> 
>     system-config-netboot
> 
> Specifically, it says:
> 
>     To use the graphical version of the Network Booting Tool, you
>     must be running the X Window System, have root privileges, and
>     have the system-config-netboot RPM package installed.
> 
> It also discusses a command-line-based approach, but that approach
> appears to require tools from the same package.
> 
> I can't find any "netboot" RPM package:
> 
>     # cat /etc/redhat-release
>     Scientific Linux SL release 5.0 (Boron)
> 
>     # locate netboot
>     #
> 
>     # yum list | grep -i netboot
>     #
> 
>     # yum --enablerepo=* list | grep -i netboot
>     #
> 
> Can anybody point me to the relevant location for this, and/or provide
> me with a crib-sheet for doing the installation some other way?
I'm sure it's covered in detail in the Red Hat documents. They should be 
part of SL (I've not looked), they _are_ hosted by CentOS and I'm sure 
by Red Hat.

Largely forget Debian. I've use both, I don't think one is better than 
the other for this, though they are different.

Your server(s) need working networking. Configuring that has nothing 
special to do with the task at hand.

I'm looking at my WBEL4 box as I write.
you need dhcpd3. Your configuration from Debian should work with minimal 
changes. This hands out DHCP addresses and tells clients which file to 
load and where to get it (it can be a different server, and on Debian I 
use that feature).

You need tftpd and xinetd. Install them, ensure xinetd starts on boot 
and that tftpd is enabled:
[summer@ns ~]$ cat /etc/xinetd.d/tftp
# default: off
# description: The tftp server serves files using the trivial file 
transfer \
#       protocol.  The tftp protocol is often used to boot diskless \
#       workstations, download configuration files to network-aware 
printers, \
#       and to start the installation process for some operating systems.
service tftp
{
         disable = no
         socket_type             = dgram
         protocol                = udp
         wait                    = yes
         user                    = root
         server                  = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
         server_args             = -s /tftpboot -v -v -r blksize
         per_source              = 11
         cps                     = 100 2
         flags                   = IPv4
}

Don't ask, that works.

At this stage you should be able to boot a client and have it get an IP 
address etc, the details of where to load pxelinux.0 and able to load it.

Red Hat puts the tftp stuff in /tftpboot, Debian uses some other place. 
Copying Debian's to SL should just work.

After this, a PXE client should be able to load pxelinux.0 and have it 
load its configuration file.

The configuration file won't work well unless everything's in /tftpboot. 
Probably, you need to configure an install source, using nfs, ftp or http.

I prefer http because I like the logs, they're good records of what 
happened, they identify all the files you actually need, they're good 
for diagnosing things when something doesn't work.

For this, I use Apache httpd

importantly, Apache can be configured as a caching proxy; I installed a 
beta of FC2 with four-hour dialup sessions, because the files already 
used were cached and so restarting the install after timeouts was quick. 
Potentially, I could be installed and running before I could download a 
set of ISO images through my ADSL connexion. On several machines.

I configure virtual hosts in Apache. here is a sample:
<VirtualHost *:80>
         ServerAdmin [log in to unmask]
         DocumentRoot /var/local/mirrors/linux/RHEL
         ServerName RHEL.demo.lan
         ServerAlias RHEL.demo.room
         ServerAlias RHEL
         Alias           /Fedora/        "/var/local/mirrors/linux/Fedora/"
         Alias           /ScientificLinux/ 
"/var/local/mirrors/linux/ScientificLinux/"
         Alias           /CentOS/        "/var/local/mirrors/linux/CentOS/"
         ScriptAlias     /ks/            "/var/local/mirrors/linux/ks/"
         ErrorLog  /var/log/httpd/RHEL-error_log
         CustomLog /var/log/httpd/RHEL-access_log combined


<directory "/var/local/mirrors/linux/Fedora">
         AllowOverride None
         Options +FollowSymLinks +Indexes
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from 192.168
</Directory>


<Directory "/var/local/mirrors/linux/CentOS/">
         AllowOverride None
         Options +FollowSymLinks +Indexes
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from 192.168
</Directory>

<directory "/var/local/mirrors/linux/ScientificLinux">
         AllowOverride None
         Options +FollowSymLinks +Indexes
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from 192.168
</Directory>




</VirtualHost>





-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
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