Bob Puff wrote:

Is there a way to launch an installer while in the OS that I can re-install the whole thing over the internet, without having to physically go to the box? Speed of installation is not that much of an issue. It would obviously need to keep up some sort of shell with my current eth0 settings during the install.

you'd need a remote console of some sort on that box. many brand name servers have these, HP calls it iLO, Dell calls it DRAC, etc. these have their own ethernet port, which has to be connected to the network and configured. you'd also need a PXE server on the same network segment to do a jumpstart install from, or use a virtual CD with that remote console (slow if you're not onsite)

Barring that, I think you are SOL.

On 06/13/2009 07:56 AM, Bob Puff wrote:

Is there a way to launch an installer while in the OS that I can re-install the whole thing over the internet, without having to physically go to the box?

No, but you can:

1) Grab the vmlinuz and initrd.img from the installation CD's images/pxeboot directory and save them to /boot/ 2) Set up a stanza in grub.conf that will load that vmlinuz and initrd. You will need to list the "ksdevice", ip address, netmask, gateway, and kickstart URL in grub.conf. 3) Create a kickstart file that specifies exactly the configuration that you require and store it at the URL you used in grub.conf.

Test the entire process on a local machine until it works exactly the way that you want it. You can use "system-config-kickstart" to set up your kickstart file. It would be best to use that tool on CentOS 5. Newer systems (like Fedora 11) use an updated syntax that may not parse correctly on CentOS 5.

on 6-13-2009 7:56 AM Bob Puff spake the following:

Hello,

I just got back from a datacenter where I installed a new server running CentOS 5.3. I set up a software raid with md0 being /. (Only one mount, didn't split anything up.)

I just discovered that instead of raid 1, it did raid 0... Not exactly what I wanted! Probably missed that little check when installing. So now, I need to change this. But since the whole OS is on this raided partition that I want to change, I'm a bit stuck.

Is there a way to launch an installer while in the OS that I can re-install the whole thing over the internet, without having to physically go to the box? Speed of installation is not that much of an issue. It would obviously need to keep up some sort of shell with my current eth0 settings during the install.

Thanks for any ideas!

Bob

If you can manage to free a small amount of space in a non raid 0 boot partition you can do a remote install. You can also do one with the netboot cd if your colo is willing to place a cd and reboot for you. You can do a vnc remote install and pull everything from the internet if the box has access.

If you don't have any space that WON'T need to be formatted during the install, you might just be out of luck unless you can get a boot cd to them.