Remote Installation of RedHat 6.2

with use of BOOTP/DHCP and kickstart

The client site

A client requires an ethernet card with BOOT/ROM installed on it to be able to boot/install over a network. Hopefully the BOOT-ROM includes code that makes this possible. But if you don't have such a card then you can nevertheless boot over the network if you use a special boot disk that make the network boot functionality via BOOTP/DHCP available. Such a disk can you make with the package:

TARS/etherboot-4.6.2.tar.gz

(http://etherboot.sourceforge.net/)

• unpack package
• create binaries

  cd etherboot-4.6.2/src/
  make

• choose an image and create boot disk with suitable driver (in our case tulip.rom)

  cat floppyload.bin.pre bin32/tulip.rom > /dev/fd0

The server site

We have more to do on server site to make the needed services available. First isomething about the packages that we need. On this place I suppose that the BOOTP/DHCP and NFS servers should be on the same machine.

packages:

dhcp	BOOTP/DHCP daemon to provide IP address allocating included in RedHat distribution
tftp	TFTP daemon to transport tagged network boot images form server to client included in RedHat distribution
mknbi	to make a tagged Network Boot Images included in etherboot-4.6.2.tar.gz or use this RPM packages RPMS/mknbi-1.0-2.noarch.rpm resp. RPMS/mknbi-1.0-2.src.rpm
portmap	foundation for NFS service included in RedHat distribution
knfsd	all daemons that are important for NFS service included in RedHat distribution

Now follow these steps to make the server working:

• First install all packages that are not allready installed.
• Then copy a full RedHat distribution on a hard drive, but at a place that you can later export via NFS. In our example this place should be $KSINSTROOT/ks-cd-img-6.2/

  export KSINSTROOT=/scratch/mibe/kickstart
  cd /afs/tucz/global/i386_linux22/install/redhat-6.2/i386/
  find > $KSINSTROOT/ks-cd-img-6.2.files
  cpio -p $KSINSTROOT/ks-cd-img-6.2/ < $KSINSTROOT/ks-cd-img-6.2.files

• create a tagged Network Boot Image
  Thats why we need package mknbi installed. Before we start I want make a mention. I want create for every client its own kickstart file. The naming rule for such a file is <client-IP-addresse>-kickstart, for example 192.168.250.3-kickstart. This convention is was fixed by RedHat kickstart algorith.

  (root)

  mknbi-linux $KSINSTROOT/ks-cd-img-6.2/misc/src/trees/boot/vmlinuz      \
    $KSINSTROOT/ks-cd-img-6.2/misc/src/trees/initrd-network.img          \
    --append="ks=nfs:192.168.250.254:/scratch/mibe/kickstart/ks-roots/ " \
    > /tftpboot/linux-6.2.nbi

  This command write the tagged Network Boot Image allready into the directory what TFTP use later to provide it to the clients.
• configure DHCPD
  An example configuration for /etc/dhcpd.conf is shown in file configs/dhcpd.conf. Our network consists of a server machine with three network interface cards. Our four nodes should get her IP addresses from this server. Every node should get the file

  filename linux.nbi

  from the server

  next-server 192.168.250.254

• In reality file "linux.nbi" is located in TFTPD's root directory /tftpboot at servers site. I have made use of a symbolic link to the real image. Then you don't need to restart TFTP service everytime if you have changed something.

  (root)

  cd /tftpboot
  ln -s linux-6.2.nbi linux.nbi

• configure TFTP service
  You can use the bourne shell script bin/bootp-dhcp.sh. What does it do?
  • it looks for dhcpd, in.tftpd, in.mtftpd
  • registration of tftp and/or mtftp services (ports) in /etc/services
  • registration of tftp and/or mtftp services in /etc/inetd.conf
  • reinitializes inetd
  • restart of dhcpd
  hint:
  If you expect BOOTP/DHCP requests from many clients at a short time intervall then you should increase the value of maxium count of TFTP request processed by inetd per minute in /etc/inetd.conf from default value of 40 to a larger value. If we want that inetd should process 120 requests per minute then the line should looks like:

  tftp  dgram udp wait.120 root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.tftpd  [TFTPD root dir]

  resp.

  mtftp dgram udp wait.120 root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.mtftpd [TFTPD root dir]

• We have to create a directory that should assimilate our kickstart script files. It must be the same location which we have compiled into the tagged Network Boot Image.

  mkdir $KSINSTROOT/ks-roots/

• configure NFS service like described in file /etc/exports
  We want export the directories that content
  • our installable ResHat distribution and
  • all the kickstart script files
• Now re-/start all services if it is necessary

  killall -HUP inetd
  /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd restart
  /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs stop
  /etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap restart
  /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs start

• store all in directory $KSINSTROOT/ks-roots/

  cd $KSINSTROOT/ks-roots/

• Their naming shoul follow these conventions:
  

  <IP-addresse>-kickstart

  like for example 192.168.250.1-kickstart, 192.168.250.2-kickstart and so on. So we got the possibility to configure every client individually.
• You can look into example kickstart scripts

  configs/sample-kickstart

  resp.

  configs/192.168.250.3-kickstart

  More information about syntax and meaning of kickstart script file you can get from http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-6.2-Manual/ref-guide/ch-kickstart2.html RedHat site.

something about BUG's

• "zerombr yes" does not work correctly.
  You can find out this if you want to install to an unformated hard drive.
  There exists a patch thats cames via email BUGS/zerombr.mail

group applications from Computer Centre of Chemnitz University of Technology Mike Becher 25. Jan 2001, 24. Jan 2001