Hi,
I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this?
The server I have already runs as a central repo, which is updated from one or our local centos mirrors, and the other CentOS servers (both i386 & x64), as well as CentOS VPS's get their updates from this server.
But, now I want to allow a client to perform a quick network installation, using either a netbood CD, or preferably with the server's network bootrom. I understand this can be done with bootp, or am I on the wrong track?
the server is a general file server and also acts as our in-office internet gateway, and has Webmin installed for convenience sake. I don't know if this is of any use?
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers & desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
2010/2/18 Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com:
Hi, I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this? The server I have already runs as a central repo, which is updated from one or our local centos mirrors, and the other CentOS servers (both i386 & x64), as well as CentOS VPS's get their updates from this server. But, now I want to allow a client to perform a quick network installation, using either a netbood CD, or preferably with the server's network bootrom. I understand this can be done with bootp, or am I on the wrong track? the server is a general file server and also acts as our in-office internet gateway, and has Webmin installed for convenience sake. I don't know if this is of any use? Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers & desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
See the kickstart at : http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-howus...
-- Eero
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Eero Volotinen eero.volotinen@iki.fiwrote:
See the kickstart at :
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-howus...
-- Eero _______________________________________________
We already use kickstart files, where needed :) But that doesn't help me with setting up the server environment
2010/2/18 Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Eero Volotinen eero.volotinen@iki.fi wrote:
See the kickstart at :
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-howus...
-- Eero _______________________________________________
We already use kickstart files, where needed :) But that doesn't help me with setting up the server environment
Why not? You can prepare server configuration/installation on kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based configurations?
-- Eero
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Eero Volotinen eero.volotinen@iki.fiwrote:
kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based configurations?
-- Eero _______________________________________________
Is kickstart REALLY the only way?
How do I configure the server so that the client can use network boot, without a CD?
2010/2/18 Rudi Ahlers rudiahlers@gmail.com:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Eero Volotinen eero.volotinen@iki.fi wrote:
kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based configurations?
-- Eero _______________________________________________
Is kickstart REALLY the only way? How do I configure the server so that the client can use network boot, without a CD?
PXE.
-- Eero
Is kickstart REALLY the only way? How do I configure the server so that the client can use network boot, without a CD?
See documentation at: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PXE/PXE_Setup
-- Eero
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based configurations?Is kickstart REALLY the only way?
How do I configure the server so that the client can use network boot, without a CD?
Hi
You can use PXE. You have to set up a tftp and a DHCP server. Sometimes you have to enable PXE in the BIOS - I always to do this with Dell machines.
Regards
mg.
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Marcelo M. Garcia < marcelo.maia.garcia@googlemail.com> wrote:
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based configurations?Is kickstart REALLY the only way?
How do I configure the server so that the client can use network boot, without a CD?
Hi
You can use PXE. You have to set up a tftp and a DHCP server. Sometimes you have to enable PXE in the BIOS - I always to do this with Dell machines.
Regards
mg.
aha, this is what I was look for :)
thanx
----- Original Message ----
From: Marcelo M. Garcia marcelo.maia.garcia@googlemail.com To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Sent: Thu, February 18, 2010 7:16:45 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] best practice: how to setup a central "network installation server"?
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based configurations?Is kickstart REALLY the only way?
How do I configure the server so that the client can use network boot, without a CD?
Hi
You can use PXE. You have to set up a tftp and a DHCP server. Sometimes you have to enable PXE in the BIOS - I always to do this with Dell machines.
Install cobbler, it makes building a netinstall server as easy as 1 2 3
cobbler handles pxe, dhcp, http repo setup, kickstart and such.
I've used it many times, it takes less than 15 minutes from "yum install cobbler" to the start of the network installs of the client machines.
Once you set it up, just power on the client machine and watch it install automagically
Fer
If you want to invest a little extra time you can install Spacewalk (the open source version of Red Hat's Satellite) which has Cobbler built into it plus it provides centralized management of your devices both for monitoring services as well as being able to deploy config files, updates , etc. It provides a nice clean interface for Cobbler and it is fully integrated into it.
Installing just Cobbler is definitely the quick way to get this going but taking the time to deploy Spacewalk (especially if you manage lots of servers) is worth the effort. We've been running it for less than a year and we're very happy with it.
____________________________ Matt Ausmus Network Administrator Chapman University 635 West Palm Street Orange, CA 92868 (714)628-2738 mausmus@chapman.edu
"What the gods get away with, the cows don't." -THE AQUINAS AXIOM -----Original Message----- From: Fernando Gleiser [mailto:fergleiser@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 11:13 AM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] best practice: how to setup a central "network installation server"?
----- Original Message ----
From: Marcelo M. Garcia marcelo.maia.garcia@googlemail.com To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Sent: Thu, February 18, 2010 7:16:45 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] best practice: how to setup a central "network
installation server"?
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
kickstart file, if you are familiar with text based
configurations?
Is kickstart REALLY the only way?
How do I configure the server so that the client can use network
boot,
without a CD?
Hi
You can use PXE. You have to set up a tftp and a DHCP server.
Sometimes
you have to enable PXE in the BIOS - I always to do this with Dell
machines.
Install cobbler, it makes building a netinstall server as easy as 1 2 3
cobbler handles pxe, dhcp, http repo setup, kickstart and such.
I've used it many times, it takes less than 15 minutes from "yum install cobbler" to the start of the network installs of the client machines.
Once you set it up, just power on the client machine and watch it install automagically
Fer
On 2/19/2010 11:33 AM, Ausmus, Matt wrote:
If you want to invest a little extra time you can install Spacewalk (the open source version of Red Hat's Satellite) which has Cobbler built into it plus it provides centralized management of your devices both for monitoring services as well as being able to deploy config files, updates , etc. It provides a nice clean interface for Cobbler and it is fully integrated into it.
Installing just Cobbler is definitely the quick way to get this going but taking the time to deploy Spacewalk (especially if you manage lots of servers) is worth the effort. We've been running it for less than a year and we're very happy with it.
Does it give you a way to add additional things to boot? That is, could you patch in the clonezilla boot that drbl has for the times you want image copies while still using its native facilities for Centos targets?
Am 18.02.2010 10:00, schrieb Rudi Ahlers:
Hi,
I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this?
https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/
Rainer
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
Hi,
I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this?
The server I have already runs as a central repo, which is updated from one or our local centos mirrors, and the other CentOS servers (both i386 & x64), as well as CentOS VPS's get their updates from this server.
But, now I want to allow a client to perform a quick network installation, using either a netbood CD, or preferably with the server's network bootrom. I understand this can be done with bootp, or am I on the wrong track?
the server is a general file server and also acts as our in-office internet gateway, and has Webmin installed for convenience sake. I don't know if this is of any use?
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers & desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
--
Hi
I'm starting to play with Cobbler. Besides to central installation server, it also supports other distributions, like SuSE and Debian (Ubuntu?).
https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/
Regards
mg.
Hi Rudi,
Rudi Ahlers sent a missive on 2010-02-18:
Hi,
I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this?
The server I have already runs as a central repo, which is updated from one or our local centos mirrors, and the other CentOS servers (both i386 & x64), as well as CentOS VPS's get their updates from this
server.
But, now I want to allow a client to perform a quick network installation, using either a netbood CD, or preferably with the server's network bootrom. I understand this can be done with bootp, or am I on the wrong track?
the server is a general file server and also acts as our in-office internet gateway, and has Webmin installed for convenience sake. I don't know if this is of any use?
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers & desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
I'm not suggesting that this is "best practice" but this works in my environment for unattended installations or reinstallations.
1) The first thing that I did to get this to work was to have a web server hold the distribution of Centos needed. This was accessible to the servers that I was building using a boot CD and specifying network install. 2) I then automated this installation using kickstart files also held on the web server. 3) I then setup a PXE boot server using tftpd and configured the server to be built to boot via PXE (using dhcp options to point to the correct pxe boot server and boot file) and then to connect to web server to built itself. 4) I also use koan on existing systems to enable me to rebuild them remotely. Using koan I am able to reboot the machine and it will then pxe boot (without the need to have bios set) and complete the installation.
I hope that this points you in the right direction.
Rgds
Simon.
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
Hi,
I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this?
The server I have already runs as a central repo, which is updated from one or our local centos mirrors, and the other CentOS servers (both i386 & x64), as well as CentOS VPS's get their updates from this server.
But, now I want to allow a client to perform a quick network installation, using either a netbood CD, or preferably with the server's network bootrom. I understand this can be done with bootp, or am I on the wrong track?
the server is a general file server and also acts as our in-office internet gateway, and has Webmin installed for convenience sake. I don't know if this is of any use?
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers & desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
If you want to do disk cloning (any OS, including windows) or PXE boot into a running, look at drbl and clonezilla http://drbl.sourceforge.net/. You can find a yum repository for Centos in the list at http://drbl.sourceforge.net/one4all/.
It has a menu configuration that I think can be made to boot into an installer but I've never used it that way since our machines are mostly identical and a lot of them are windows based.
On 2/18/2010 8:49 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
Hi,
I want to setup a central installation server, but haven't done this before, so I want to find out what would be best practices for this?
The server I have already runs as a central repo, which is updated from one or our local centos mirrors, and the other CentOS servers (both i386 & x64), as well as CentOS VPS's get their updates from this server.
But, now I want to allow a client to perform a quick network installation, using either a netbood CD, or preferably with the server's network bootrom. I understand this can be done with bootp, or am I on the wrong track?
the server is a general file server and also acts as our in-office internet gateway, and has Webmin installed for convenience sake. I don't know if this is of any use?
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers& desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
If you want to do disk cloning (any OS, including windows) or PXE boot into a running, look at drbl and clonezilla http://drbl.sourceforge.net/. You can find a yum repository for Centos in the list at http://drbl.sourceforge.net/one4all/.
It has a menu configuration that I think can be made to boot into an installer but I've never used it that way since our machines are mostly identical and a lot of them are windows based.
+1
This is how I have it setup. Reboot any PC, hit F12, PXE boot a menu of selections: Clonezilla backup/restore, Centos5 install/rescue, DBAN, memtest, systemrescuecd, etc.
WARNING - drbl/clonezilla server should probably be tested/installed on a standalone test box as it likes to overwrite several conf's. Also, if you have a mix of 32bit & 64bit client hardware, use a 32bit server. Your 32bit machines will work & you can still PXE boot into 64bit stuff.
On 2/18/2010 8:58 AM, Toby Bluhm wrote:
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers& desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
If you want to do disk cloning (any OS, including windows) or PXE boot into a running, look at drbl and clonezilla http://drbl.sourceforge.net/. You can find a yum repository for Centos in the list at http://drbl.sourceforge.net/one4all/.
It has a menu configuration that I think can be made to boot into an installer but I've never used it that way since our machines are mostly identical and a lot of them are windows based.
+1
This is how I have it setup. Reboot any PC, hit F12, PXE boot a menu of selections: Clonezilla backup/restore, Centos5 install/rescue, DBAN, memtest, systemrescuecd, etc.
WARNING - drbl/clonezilla server should probably be tested/installed on a standalone test box as it likes to overwrite several conf's. Also, if you have a mix of 32bit& 64bit client hardware, use a 32bit server. Your 32bit machines will work& you can still PXE boot into 64bit stuff.
That's going to be true of any installation that involves your DHCP server since you typically have only one and it has to be set up specifically for your subnets. For the moment at least, we run drbl in a lab setting using its DHCP/PXE booting only on a separate subnet that we use for cloning. If we want access to the images from other networks we use a CD or USB boot to clonezilla and connect to the other interface on the server. If I did that more often, I'd probably set up the drbl box to handle all dhcp or configure the main dhcp server to have the same booting options.
Have you looked at Cobbler and KOAN? Great tools...
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 2/18/2010 8:58 AM, Toby Bluhm wrote:
Generally we would be (re)installing CentOS servers& desktops, but I guess it could be useful for other distro's like Fedora Core / Debian / FreeBSD? / etc. What would be a good option to go for, or could someone point me to a good documentation? Doing a google search I found a lot of instructions on how to perform a network installation on the client PC's, but not how to configure the server. Maybe I used the wrong key words?
If you want to do disk cloning (any OS, including windows) or PXE boot into a running, look at drbl and clonezilla http://drbl.sourceforge.net/. You can find a yum repository for Centos in the list at http://drbl.sourceforge.net/one4all/.
It has a menu configuration that I think can be made to boot into an installer but I've never used it that way since our machines are mostly identical and a lot of them are windows based.
+1
This is how I have it setup. Reboot any PC, hit F12, PXE boot a menu of selections: Clonezilla backup/restore, Centos5 install/rescue, DBAN, memtest, systemrescuecd, etc.
WARNING - drbl/clonezilla server should probably be tested/installed on a standalone test box as it likes to overwrite several conf's. Also, if you have a mix of 32bit& 64bit client hardware, use a 32bit server. Your 32bit machines will work& you can still PXE boot into 64bit stuff.
That's going to be true of any installation that involves your DHCP server since you typically have only one and it has to be set up specifically for your subnets. For the moment at least, we run drbl in a lab setting using its DHCP/PXE booting only on a separate subnet that we use for cloning. If we want access to the images from other networks we use a CD or USB boot to clonezilla and connect to the other interface on the server. If I did that more often, I'd probably set up the drbl box to handle all dhcp or configure the main dhcp server to have the same booting options.
-
Ausmus, Matt -
Eero Volotinen -
Fernando Gleiser -
Les Mikesell -
Marcelo M. Garcia -
Rainer Duffner -
Rudi Ahlers -
Rudi Ahlers -
Scot P. Floess -
Simon Billis -
Toby Bluhm