Joseph L. Casale wrote:
If you have a Win2k3 server license you could setup a Xen guest to act as a RIS server too which would allow you to host Windows and Linux distributions.
Ross, I would love to know how you did this, I assume it wasn't trivial to install Linux guests with RIS? Thanks, jlc
Start with a working RIS setup, enable support for legacy RIS images.
Then:
Create a directory structure as such, from the base RIS volume:
RemoteInstall | +- Setup | +- English | +- Images | +- CentOS5 | +- amd64 | | | +- templates | | | +- pxelinux.cfg | +- i386 | +- templates | +- pxelinux.cfg
Under the templates directory for each version copy:
initrd.img (the pxeboot version) vmlinuz (the pxeboot version)
as well as a copy of the pxelinux.0 binary from the most recent syslinux/pxeboot available.
Optionally I throw in the 'splash.lss' from the distro media, and create or copy a 'pxeboot.msg' file to give it a little flare.
Next create a pxelinux.sif file in each templates directory. This file will be picked up by RIS and will set up the menu for this distro/processor.
Here's the contents of mine:
[OSChooser] Description ="CentOS 5" Help ="This option runs the CentOS 5 install for the [i386|x86_64] processor family." LaunchFile = "%INSTALLPATH%%MACHINETYPE%\templates\pxelinux.0" ImageType =Flat Version="1.01"
Then in the pxelinux.cfg directory create the 'default' syslinux file per the particular distro's needs (ram file size etc).
Here is the contents of my CentOS5 default:
default server prompt 1 timeout 100 display pxeboot.msg
label server kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img ramdisk_size=8192 root=/dev/ram0 ip=dhcp lang=us expert ksdevice=eth0 ks=http://10.1.1.60/CentOS/5/server.cfg method=http://10.1.1.60/CentOS/5/os/i386 noipv6 quiet label desktop kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img ramdisk_size=8192 root=/dev/ram0 ip=dhcp lang=us ksdevice=eth0 ks=http://10.1.1.60/CentOS/5/desktop.cfg method=http://10.1.1.60/CentOS/5/os/i386 noipv6 quiet
I basically have the distros located on a web server. I wget replicate the distro creating a directory for each version (5.0,5.1 etc) and an alias '5' that points to the current supported version.
I'd be happy to share my kickstart files, but will do so off-list as they are lengthy and it just adds unnecessary volume to the list.
-Ross
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