According to http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOSLiveCD5.5 "There is a "Network Install" option on the Live CD that is the same as our CentOS-5.5-i386-netinstall ISO".
I've looked quite carefully at my CentOS-5.5 Live CD (on a USB stick), and I don't see a Network Install option anywhere.
Could some kind soul explain where it can be found, please.
On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
According to http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOSLiveCD5.5 "There is a "Network Install" option on the Live CD that is the same as our CentOS-5.5-i386-netinstall ISO".
I've looked quite carefully at my CentOS-5.5 Live CD (on a USB stick), and I don't see a Network Install option anywhere.
Could some kind soul explain where it can be found, please.
Try hitting the space bar during the Automatic boot countdown screen. That should give you the boot menu with the option to do the network install.
Also note that the next version of the LiveCD won't have this option:
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOSLiveCD5.6
William Hooper wrote:
I've looked quite carefully at my CentOS-5.5 Live CD (on a USB stick), and I don't see a Network Install option anywhere.
Try hitting the space bar during the Automatic boot countdown screen. That should give you the boot menu with the option to do the network install.
Thanks. I had actually found that by chance.
Also note that the next version of the LiveCD won't have this option:
I wonder why? I have found it quite difficult to install CentOS-5.5 on my HP microserver, which doesn't come with a CD drive. For some reason, I haven't been able to get netinstall on a USB stick. Also, I have partitioned the disk (with CentOS Live CD), and want to use this partitioning. Cobbler (with default settings) overwrote this partitioning, and replaced it with LVM.
I'm sure it is possible to modify cobbler settings to use an existing partition, as also to use PXEboot without cobbler, which I've done before. But either involves some complication, and I am interested in finding a simple "out of the box" solution, if there is one.
I would have thought that nowadays more people would want to install with a USB stick than with the traditional CD or DVD, which I imagine will go the way of the floppy for this purpose.
My suspicion, perhaps unfair. is that RedHat don't really favour USB installation, since it gives them less control over the product.
Timothy Murphy wrote:
I've looked quite carefully at my CentOS-5.5 Live CD (on a USB stick), and I don't see a Network Install option anywhere.
Try hitting the space bar during the Automatic boot countdown screen. That should give you the boot menu with the option to do the network install.
Thanks. I had actually found that by chance.
To continue my personal saga, I did manage to get CentOS-5.5 running on my HP micro-server (an excellent machine, by my experience so far) by running Network Install, as was suggested, from a CentOS Live USB stick, and accessing the DVD ISO on another machine by NFS.
I had already partitioned the hard disk with the USB stick, so I opted for a Custom Installation (as I always do) and used these partitions.
The only slight problem was that when I re-booted after installation, I could only get a grub> prompt, and no kernel could be found. (Also, rather oddly, during installation I was only offered /dev/sda2 - which I had nominated as /boot - as location for grub installation.)
I checked with the USB stick that everything was in place on the hard disk, and then mounted /dev/sda5 as /mnt/hd , and /dev/sda2 as /mnt/hd/boot , and ran "grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hd /dev/sda". This gave the warning that /boot/grub/devices.map had /dev/sda as hd1 and /dev/sdb (the USB stick) as hd0. But after editing devices.map and running grub-install again, all was well, and I could re-boot into CentOS on the hard disk.
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
On 4/6/11 6:17 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
I thought I did that a long time ago. Put the small boot.img file that is in the /images on the CD or DVD isos on a USB drive (you can use a loopback mount to get it if you can't find a place to download it separately), boot from it, pick nfs as the install method, and point it to the directory containing the CD iso images that you have under an NFS export on another box. You'll be in the same installer as if you booted the install disk with 'linux askmethod' at the boot prompt and have all the same choices as you would if you were changing CDs as you go - except it takes care of that for you.
Les Mikesell wrote:
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
I thought I did that a long time ago. Put the small boot.img file that is in the /images on the CD or DVD isos on a USB drive (you can use a loopback mount to get it if you can't find a place to download it separately), boot from it, pick nfs as the install method, and point it to the directory containing the CD iso images that you have under an NFS export on another box.
Sorry, Les. I did read your suggestion, and it was indeed on my list of options, if running Network Installation from the Live USB stick didn't work. And I have noted it for CentOS-6, since apparently Network Installation from CentOS Live CD will no longer be available. (Why not, as a matter of interest?)
But when I said "simple" I really meant "following official methods and instructions given by Them, the CentOS powers-that-be".
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
On 4/7/11 7:47 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
I thought I did that a long time ago. Put the small boot.img file that is in the /images on the CD or DVD isos on a USB drive (you can use a loopback mount to get it if you can't find a place to download it separately), boot from it, pick nfs as the install method, and point it to the directory containing the CD iso images that you have under an NFS export on another box.
Sorry, Les. I did read your suggestion, and it was indeed on my list of options, if running Network Installation from the Live USB stick didn't work. And I have noted it for CentOS-6, since apparently Network Installation from CentOS Live CD will no longer be available. (Why not, as a matter of interest?)
But when I said "simple" I really meant "following official methods and instructions given by Them, the CentOS powers-that-be".
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I don't get it. That's the whole point of the boot.img, which is made to simply dd onto a usb device. And having booted from that, there is nothing different than any other way of booting into the installer except that you have to tell it where the install media is. It is exactly the same as if you had booted the install CD or DVD with 'linux askmethod' at the boot prompt to get that question. No special methods or instructions needed, and the only thing that won't be obvious until you have done it is that the installer knows how to work with the CD iso images saved in a directory.
On 7.4.2011 14:47, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
I thought I did that a long time ago. Put the small boot.img file that is in the /images on the CD or DVD isos on a USB drive (you can use a loopback mount to get it if you can't find a place to download it separately), boot from it, pick nfs as the install method, and point it to the directory containing the CD iso images that you have under an NFS export on another box.
...
But when I said "simple" I really meant "following official methods and instructions given by Them, the CentOS powers-that-be".
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?
I prefer PXE, but thats also not "simple", and not possible in every environment, colocations for instance.
On 4/7/2011 8:14 AM, Markus Falb wrote:
I thought I did that a long time ago. Put the small boot.img file that is in the /images on the CD or DVD isos on a USB drive (you can use a loopback mount to get it if you can't find a place to download it separately), boot from it, pick nfs as the install method, and point it to the directory containing the CD iso images that you have under an NFS export on another box.
...
But when I said "simple" I really meant "following official methods and instructions given by Them, the CentOS powers-that-be".
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?
Here's the prompt you'll see and what it means:
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-single/Ins...
I prefer PXE, but thats also not "simple", and not possible in every environment, colocations for instance.
There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub. I do nfs installs all the time because it is quicker/easier than swapping CDs in machines that don't have a DVD drive, but I normally burn the first disk and use 'linux askmethod' at the boot prompt. But, if grub isn't automatically installed right automatically, you can get into a shell with ctl-alt-F-something (F2 or F4, I think) and fix it before rebooting, or you should be able to boot even the boot.img into rescue mode - you just have to point it at the media again.
On 07/04/11 15:40, Les Mikesell wrote:
There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub.
The thing to watch for with this is "Disk ordering" in the grub setup (only in the graphical installer). Generally Anaconda remaps your devices so the USB stick becomes /dev/sda, then you get Grub installed on the stick.
Tom Grace wrote:
On 07/04/11 15:40, Les Mikesell wrote:
There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub.
The thing to watch for with this is "Disk ordering" in the grub setup (only in the graphical installer). Generally Anaconda remaps your devices so the USB stick becomes /dev/sda, then you get Grub installed on the stick.
I solved all of that last year, and the link I posted covered it all.
mark
On 4/7/2011 9:52 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Tom Grace wrote:
On 07/04/11 15:40, Les Mikesell wrote:
There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub.
The thing to watch for with this is "Disk ordering" in the grub setup (only in the graphical installer). Generally Anaconda remaps your devices so the USB stick becomes /dev/sda, then you get Grub installed on the stick.
I solved all of that last year, and the link I posted covered it all.
I gave up reading that when I saw stuff about converting an iso to a usb boot, none of which needs to be done for an nfs install using the boot.img which is already usable. Do you have a link for the relevant part?
Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/7/2011 9:52 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Tom Grace wrote:
On 07/04/11 15:40, Les Mikesell wrote:
There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub.
The thing to watch for with this is "Disk ordering" in the grub setup (only in the graphical installer). Generally Anaconda remaps your devices so the USB stick becomes /dev/sda, then you get Grub installed on the stick.
I solved all of that last year, and the link I posted covered it all.
I gave up reading that when I saw stuff about converting an iso to a usb boot, none of which needs to be done for an nfs install using the boot.img which is already usable. Do you have a link for the relevant part?
The OP, I *think*, was asking how to install without a DVD drive - it wasn't clear to me what they needed, but since they talked about not having a drive for optical media, I assumed they were looking for alternatives besides network install.
mark
On 4/7/2011 10:08 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
There is one quirk about USB booting that I forgot: it is likely to confuse the installer's concept of disk names and where to install grub.
The thing to watch for with this is "Disk ordering" in the grub setup (only in the graphical installer). Generally Anaconda remaps your devices so the USB stick becomes /dev/sda, then you get Grub installed on the stick.
I solved all of that last year, and the link I posted covered it all.
I gave up reading that when I saw stuff about converting an iso to a usb boot, none of which needs to be done for an nfs install using the boot.img which is already usable. Do you have a link for the relevant part?
The OP, I *think*, was asking how to install without a DVD drive - it wasn't clear to me what they needed, but since they talked about not having a drive for optical media, I assumed they were looking for alternatives besides network install.
No, he has another linux box and a network. The only issue is booting into the installer without a CD/DVD drive.
Les Mikesell wrote:
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?
Here's the prompt you'll see and what it means:
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-
single/Installation_Guide/index.html#s1-begininstall-nfs-x86
I see no mention there of the method you suggested, which was --------------------------- I don't get it. That's the whole point of the boot.img, which is made to simply dd onto a usb device. And having booted from that, there is nothing different than any other way of booting into the installer except that you have to tell it where the install media is. ---------------------------
Actually, I can't find "boot.img" on the DVD:
[tim@helen ~]$ cd /mnt/dvd [tim@helen dvd]$ sudo find . -name disk.img -print [tim@helen dvd]$
I see images/bootdisk.img . Is that what you meant?
In any case, I tried dd-ing this to /dev/sdb (the USB stick).
[tim@helen dvd]$ sudo cp images/diskboot.img /tmp [tim@helen dvd]$ cd /tmp [tim@helen tmp]$ sudo dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb 24576+0 records in 24576+0 records out 12582912 bytes (13 MB) copied, 0.766341 seconds, 16.4 MB/s
But when I re-booted my laptop with the USB stick in (having made sure it was top of the boot order in the Bios) it failed to start.
I re-formatted the USB stick under Windows, and tried dd-ing diskboot.img to /dev/sdb1 but the outcome was the same.
On 4/7/11 7:28 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?
Here's the prompt you'll see and what it means:
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-
single/Installation_Guide/index.html#s1-begininstall-nfs-x86
I see no mention there of the method you suggested, which was
I don't get it. That's the whole point of the boot.img, which is made to simply dd onto a usb device. And having booted from that, there is nothing different than any other way of booting into the installer except that you have to tell it where the install media is.
Actually, I can't find "boot.img" on the DVD:
[tim@helen ~]$ cd /mnt/dvd [tim@helen dvd]$ sudo find . -name disk.img -print [tim@helen dvd]$
I see images/bootdisk.img . Is that what you meant?
Yes, my memory isn't that great, but it is in the install guide: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-US/ch02s04.html#id30...
In any case, I tried dd-ing this to /dev/sdb (the USB stick).
[tim@helen dvd]$ sudo cp images/diskboot.img /tmp [tim@helen dvd]$ cd /tmp [tim@helen tmp]$ sudo dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb 24576+0 records in 24576+0 records out 12582912 bytes (13 MB) copied, 0.766341 seconds, 16.4 MB/s
But when I re-booted my laptop with the USB stick in (having made sure it was top of the boot order in the Bios) it failed to start.
I re-formatted the USB stick under Windows, and tried dd-ing diskboot.img to /dev/sdb1 but the outcome was the same.
It should go to the raw disk device, not a partition and you shouldn't need to format first. I can't help much with this part since I normally boot a CD with 'linux askmethod' at the prompt to get to that point. I guess you could try grabbing a different copy from a mirror site like: http://centos.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/centos/5.5/os/i386/images/
On 8.4.2011 02:54, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/7/11 7:28 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?
Here's the prompt you'll see and what it means:
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-
single/Installation_Guide/index.html#s1-begininstall-nfs-x86
I see no mention there of the method you suggested, which was
I don't get it. That's the whole point of the boot.img, which is made to simply dd onto a usb device. And having booted from that, there is nothing different than any other way of booting into the installer except that you have to tell it where the install media is.
Actually, I can't find "boot.img" on the DVD:
[tim@helen ~]$ cd /mnt/dvd [tim@helen dvd]$ sudo find . -name disk.img -print [tim@helen dvd]$
I see images/bootdisk.img . Is that what you meant?
Yes, my memory isn't that great, but it is in the install guide: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-US/ch02s04.html#id30...
My memory isnt great neither. There is a boot.iso mentioned including the use of dd but only in the Installation Guide for 6.0 (2.3 Making Minimal Boot Media)
Back to 5...
It seems that the link on centos.org is an outdated copy. Have a look at 2.4.1. Alternative Boot Methods in
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installati...
A more manual way to make usb stick bootable is described instead. Maybe you have more luck with that. dd method is not mentioned anymore.
Markus Falb wrote:
Yes, my memory isn't that great, but it is in the install guide: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-
US/ch02s04.html#id3098219
I did try the dd method again, but it didn't work for me.
My memory isnt great neither. There is a boot.iso mentioned including the use of dd but only in the Installation Guide for 6.0 (2.3 Making Minimal Boot Media)
I also tried installing boot.iso on my USB stick, using livecd-iso-to-disk ; on re-booting, the USB stick was seen by the computer but only ";" appeared on the screen.
Back to 5...
It seems that the link on centos.org is an outdated copy. Have a look at 2.4.1. Alternative Boot Methods in
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch02s04.html#sect- New_Users-Alternative_Boot_Methods
A more manual way to make usb stick bootable is described instead. Maybe you have more luck with that. dd method is not mentioned anymore.
Thanks for that. This method did work, although there is an error in the description, which slightly confused me. If you follow the instructions as given, grub-install creates directories /boot and /boot/grub on the USB stick. But then the boot fails with "File not found", which seems to make sense, since you are told to put "root (hd1,0)" in grub.conf . I found that after creating a top directory grub/ on the stick, and copying /boot/grub/* to this it booted my HP microserver fine, and I could go to NFS install.
(I actually already have CentOS-5.5 installed on this machine using the CentOS Live CD on a USB stick, and pressing SPACE at boot-time to get a list of options.)
So this seems to be a viable method, which should work even when the Network Install option is removed from CentOS Live CD as we are told it will be. Why?
(I tried adding a suggestion to this effect in the CentOS bugzilla, but there doesn't seem to be any option there for "Live CD".)
On 8.4.2011 14:58, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Markus Falb wrote:
A more manual way to make usb stick bootable is described instead. Maybe you have more luck with that. dd method is not mentioned anymore.
Thanks for that. This method did work, although there is an error in the description, which slightly confused me.
You could file a bug in Upstream Vendors bugzilla ;-)
Markus Falb wrote:
Maybe you have more luck with that. dd method is not mentioned anymore.
Thanks for that. This method did work, although there is an error in the description, which slightly confused me.
You could file a bug in Upstream Vendors bugzilla ;-)
I'll try that, though I never went there yet ...
On 4/8/2011 7:58 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Yes, my memory isn't that great, but it is in the install guide: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-
US/ch02s04.html#id3098219
I did try the dd method again, but it didn't work for me.
I still don't understand what is going wrong for you. I just went through these motions: download the bootdisk.img file from: http://mirror.highspeedweb.net/CentOS/5.5/os/i386/images/ then dd if=bootdisk.img of=/dev/sdb to a 64M USB key. (the only quirk here was that my ubuntu laptop automounted the usb key when I inserted it so I had to 'umount /dev/sdb' first) and then 'reboot' It booted into the installer, I chose nfs, let dhcp set up the network and filled in the server and path info for the location of the CD iso (5.5) images, and anaconda started running. I went far enough to make sure it saw my hard drive layout and then rebooted since I didn't really want to re-install.
What is different from the way you did it? If you mount the USB after dd'ing the contents to it, you should see a vfat filesystem with some files.
Les Mikesell wrote:
I did try the dd method again, but it didn't work for me.
I still don't understand what is going wrong for you. I just went through these motions: download the bootdisk.img file from: http://mirror.highspeedweb.net/CentOS/5.5/os/i386/images/ then dd if=bootdisk.img of=/dev/sdb to a 64M USB key. (the only quirk here was that my ubuntu laptop automounted the usb key when I inserted it so I had to 'umount /dev/sdb' first) and then 'reboot'
Thanks, it did work this time when I got the file from the above site (given that it is diskboot.img not bootdisk.img). The only difference I can see is that previously I took the file from the CentOS 64-bit DVD ISO (loop-mounted).
-------------------------------- [tim@blanche ~]$ cd Downloads/ [tim@blanche Downloads]$ ls -ls diskboot.img 12288 -rw-rw-r--. 1 tim tim 12582912 Apr 9 01:43 diskboot.img [tim@blanche Downloads]$ ls -ls diskboot.img 12288 -rw-rw-r--. 1 tim tim 12582912 Apr 9 01:43 diskboot.img [tim@blanche Downloads]$ sudo dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb 24576+0 records in 24576+0 records out 12582912 bytes (13 MB) copied, 4.0099 s, 3.1 MB/s --------------------------------
On 4/8/11 7:12 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
I did try the dd method again, but it didn't work for me.
I still don't understand what is going wrong for you. I just went through these motions: download the bootdisk.img file from: http://mirror.highspeedweb.net/CentOS/5.5/os/i386/images/ then dd if=bootdisk.img of=/dev/sdb to a 64M USB key. (the only quirk here was that my ubuntu laptop automounted the usb key when I inserted it so I had to 'umount /dev/sdb' first) and then 'reboot'
Thanks, it did work this time when I got the file from the above site (given that it is diskboot.img not bootdisk.img). The only difference I can see is that previously I took the file from the CentOS 64-bit DVD ISO (loop-mounted).
It really should have been that simple in the first place - you could have installed from the first CD set you downloaded in a few minutes.
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Thanks, it did work this time when I got the file from the above site (given that it is diskboot.img not bootdisk.img). The only difference I can see is that previously I took the file from the CentOS 64-bit DVD ISO (loop-mounted).
[tim@blanche ~]$ cd Downloads/ [tim@blanche Downloads]$ ls -ls diskboot.img 12288 -rw-rw-r--. 1 tim tim 12582912 Apr 9 01:43 diskboot.img [tim@blanche Downloads]$ ls -ls diskboot.img 12288 -rw-rw-r--. 1 tim tim 12582912 Apr 9 01:43 diskboot.img [tim@blanche Downloads]$ sudo dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb 24576+0 records in 24576+0 records out 12582912 bytes (13 MB) copied, 4.0099 s, 3.1 MB/s
I just tried boot.iso again (using the file from http://mirror.highspeedweb.net/CentOS/5.5/os/i386/images/: ----------------------------------- Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 3908351 1953152 83 Linux [tim@blanche Downloads]$ sudo livecd-iso-to-disk boot.iso /dev/sdb1 Verifying image...
The media check is complete, the result is: NA.
No checksum information available, unable to verify media. Are you SURE you want to continue? Press Enter to continue or ctrl-c to abort
/home/tim/Downloads/boot.iso uses initrd.img w/o install.img Copying DVD image to USB stick Updating boot config file Installing boot loader USB stick set up as live image! -----------------------------------
However, the HP microserver did not boot with this USB stick - or rather, it booted but only showed "-" on the screen.
Les Mikesell wrote:
I tried dd-ing this to /dev/sdb (the USB stick).
[tim@helen dvd]$ sudo cp images/diskboot.img /tmp [tim@helen dvd]$ cd /tmp [tim@helen tmp]$ sudo dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb 24576+0 records in 24576+0 records out 12582912 bytes (13 MB) copied, 0.766341 seconds, 16.4 MB/s
But when I re-booted my laptop with the USB stick in (having made sure it was top of the boot order in the Bios) it failed to start.
I re-formatted the USB stick under Windows, and tried dd-ing diskboot.img to /dev/sdb1 but the outcome was the same.
It should go to the raw disk device, not a partition and you shouldn't need to format first.
The reason I re-formatted it was that fdisk said there was no valid partition table after dd-ing bootdisk.img onto /dev/sdb .
I guess you could try grabbing a different copy from a mirror site like: http://centos.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/centos/5.5/os/i386/images/
I'll try again, now that I'm sure what you mean.
Incidentally, I also tried livecd-iso-to-disk boot.iso /dev/sdb1 but on re-booting there was just a ";" on my laptop screen. (The BIOS was set to use the USB stick, and in fact started fine with CentOS Live USB and Fedora Live USB.)
On 08/04/11 11:28, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
I re-formatted the USB stick under Windows, and tried dd-ing diskboot.img to /dev/sdb1 but the outcome was the same.
I'll try again, now that I'm sure what you mean.
You might also have some luck with "unetbootin" (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/), might also be in the CentOS repos.
Tom Grace wrote:
You might also have some luck with "unetbootin" (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/), might also be in the CentOS repos.
Yes, thanks, that was suggested before, and I have noted it as a possibility. But I'd like to get a more CentOS-centred method working, if I can.
On 4/8/11 5:28 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
It should go to the raw disk device, not a partition and you shouldn't need to format first.
The reason I re-formatted it was that fdisk said there was no valid partition table after dd-ing bootdisk.img onto /dev/sdb .
I thought small usb devices generally didn't have a partition table and just have one filesystem on the raw device. But I don't have a lot of experience with them. In any case the img file should have whatever needs to be there.
I guess you could try grabbing a different copy from a mirror site like: http://centos.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/centos/5.5/os/i386/images/
I'll try again, now that I'm sure what you mean.
That was just in case your source copy had a problem.
Incidentally, I also tried livecd-iso-to-disk boot.iso /dev/sdb1 but on re-booting there was just a ";" on my laptop screen. (The BIOS was set to use the USB stick, and in fact started fine with CentOS Live USB and Fedora Live USB.)
There's probably some clever way you could use your live USB that works to install a copy of the boot.iso files on a partition on the hard disk and make grub boot it, but the usb img file is supposed to work.
Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/8/11 5:28 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
It should go to the raw disk device, not a partition and you shouldn't need to format first.
The reason I re-formatted it was that fdisk said there was no valid partition table after dd-ing bootdisk.img onto /dev/sdb .
I thought small usb devices generally didn't have a partition table and just have one filesystem on the raw device. But I don't have a lot of experience with them. In any case the img file should have whatever
needs to be
there.
<snip> Nope, they do. As I mentioned in my build of the USB key install, I have two partitions on the key, one that's 10M, and is FAT formatted, and the rest of the 8G that's ext2.
mark
On 4/8/2011 8:15 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/8/11 5:28 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
It should go to the raw disk device, not a partition and you shouldn't need to format first.
The reason I re-formatted it was that fdisk said there was no valid partition table after dd-ing bootdisk.img onto /dev/sdb .
I thought small usb devices generally didn't have a partition table and just have one filesystem on the raw device. But I don't have a lot of experience with them. In any case the img file should have whatever
needs to be
there.
<snip> Nope, they do. As I mentioned in my build of the USB key install, I have two partitions on the key, one that's 10M, and is FAT formatted, and the rest of the 8G that's ext2.
USB disks _can_ have partitions (obviously, since you can stick about any drive into a usb adapter), but small ones typically don't and you don't need them to boot. The bootdisk.img layout appears to be a vfat on the raw disk (no partitioning) with syslinux configure to make it boot.
Les Mikesell wrote:
USB disks _can_ have partitions (obviously, since you can stick about any drive into a usb adapter), but small ones typically don't and you don't need them to boot. The bootdisk.img layout appears to be a vfat on the raw disk (no partitioning) with syslinux configure to make it boot.
The instructions in <http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ certainly advise making a partition /dev/sdb1 with partition type b and running mkdosfs on it.
I didn't actually run syslinux after dd-ing; the CentOS instructions don't say you should. But I'll try it later, though I now have a reliable if lengthy way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive, by following the instructions in the redhat document above (with one slight change I mentioned earlier).
On 4/8/2011 1:22 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
USB disks _can_ have partitions (obviously, since you can stick about any drive into a usb adapter), but small ones typically don't and you don't need them to boot. The bootdisk.img layout appears to be a vfat on the raw disk (no partitioning) with syslinux configure to make it boot.
The instructions in<http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ certainly advise making a partition /dev/sdb1 with partition type b and running mkdosfs on it.
I didn't actually run syslinux after dd-ing; the CentOS instructions don't say you should.
You don't need to for bootdisk.img. It is an image of a disk that is already configured so I'm having a hard time thinking of anything that could have gone wrong in the dd to your device - unless maybe it was automounted at the same time.
On Friday, April 08, 2011 02:22:47 PM Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
USB disks _can_ have partitions (obviously, since you can stick about any drive into a usb adapter),
The instructions in <http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ certainly advise making a partition /dev/sdb1 with partition type b and running mkdosfs on it.
Have you successfully booted with this USB stick before? Some USB sticks aren't bootable.
Lamar Owen wrote:
USB disks _can_ have partitions (obviously, since you can stick about any drive into a usb adapter),
The instructions in <http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ certainly advise making a partition /dev/sdb1 with partition type b and running mkdosfs on it.
Have you successfully booted with this USB stick before? Some USB sticks aren't bootable.
Several times, including now after following the instructions in http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/ch02s04.html.
Previously it had the CentOS Live CD on it, which ran perfectly. (That was how I installed CentOS on my new HP Microserver, after it was pointed out to me that you had to press SPACE during the boot to bring up a choice including Network Install.)
Markus Falb wrote:
I assume that the lack of a CD drive on the HP micro-server is a sign of things to come, so I would hope there would be an official method of installing CentOS on such a machine.
I think what Les suggested is one official supported method as outlined in the Installation Guide. How "official" do you want it ?
1. I have no problem with installing CentOS once I get to Network Install. It was getting there that I found more difficult than I expected.
2. Les suggested dd-ing disk.img to the USB stick. I see no mention of this in the Installation Guide. Perhaps you could point it out to me?
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
<snip> I know if you search this mailinglist's archives, you'll find my post from last year; a quick google found it this way.... http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?24,80740
Don't forget to go back via linux rescue and take care of installing grub.
mark
Timothy Murphy wrote on 04/07/2011 08:47 AM:
Network Installation from CentOS Live CD will no longer be available. (Why not, as a matter of interest?)
Because network installs tend to be problematic for all but those with local repositories or flawless broadband network connections. Having it present was raising unrealistic expectations of netinstall as a viable option, and resulting in bad first experiences with CentOS and a large support burden.
Phil
On 4/8/2011 7:55 AM, Phil Schaffner wrote:
Timothy Murphy wrote on 04/07/2011 08:47 AM:
Network Installation from CentOS Live CD will no longer be available. (Why not, as a matter of interest?)
Because network installs tend to be problematic for all but those with local repositories or flawless broadband network connections. Having it present was raising unrealistic expectations of netinstall as a viable option, and resulting in bad first experiences with CentOS and a large support burden.
None of that applies to NFS installs against locally downloaded isos - which is the fastest/easiest approach to a full set of install choices unless it is your first machine and you don't have anything to act as the server.
Les Mikesell wrote on 04/08/2011 02:27 PM:
None of that applies to NFS installs against locally downloaded isos - which is the fastest/easiest approach to a full set of install choices unless it is your first machine and you don't have anything to act as the server.
Agreed. In my mind that is equivalent to a local repo. Still not something your average newbie grabbing a LiveCD to play with is going to be likely to be able to handle, and those who can handle it are also cluefull enough to use boot.iso (AKA netinstall ISO).
Phil
On 4/8/2011 3:19 PM, Phil Schaffner wrote:
None of that applies to NFS installs against locally downloaded isos - which is the fastest/easiest approach to a full set of install choices unless it is your first machine and you don't have anything to act as the server.
Agreed. In my mind that is equivalent to a local repo. Still not something your average newbie grabbing a LiveCD to play with is going to be likely to be able to handle, and those who can handle it are also cluefull enough to use boot.iso (AKA netinstall ISO).
Yes, but there are many machines where it is useful to run the livecd to check out how the hardware will be handled and perhaps rearrange some things on the existing disks or do some manual partitioning before jumping into the install. Why force people to burn two disks when they would only need one? It could at least be a boot command line option like 'askmethod' on the normal install if you really think most people are too dumb to deal with seeing the options if they didn't ask for them.
Les Mikesell wrote on 04/08/2011 04:29 PM:
Why force people to burn two disks when they would only need one?
You are welcome to debate that with the LiveCD maintainer, or to roll your own version including the option, but as a guy who has spent a lot of time answering the newbies on the forum who got tripped up by it, I fully support the decision.
Phil
On 4/8/2011 3:35 PM, Phil Schaffner wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote on 04/08/2011 04:29 PM:
Why force people to burn two disks when they would only need one?
You are welcome to debate that with the LiveCD maintainer, or to roll your own version including the option, but as a guy who has spent a lot of time answering the newbies on the forum who got tripped up by it, I fully support the decision.
Did anyone tell them how easy an nfs install is?
On 4/8/2011 4:26 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On Friday, April 08, 2011 04:42:59 PM Les Mikesell wrote:
Did anyone tell them how easy an nfs install is?
That makes the assumption that there is an nfs server available. We certainly don't do nfs here.
If this isn't your first install, you are a couple of commands away from having one. Faster/easier than burning yet another iso or 7.
On Friday, April 08, 2011 05:43:03 PM Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/8/2011 4:26 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
That makes the assumption that there is an nfs server available. We certainly don't do nfs here.
If this isn't your first install, you are a couple of commands away from having one. Faster/easier than burning yet another iso or 7.
That makes the assumption I haven't done/don't do http installs...... nfs isn't the only netinstall method. We just don't do nfs.
On 4/8/2011 4:48 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
That makes the assumption that there is an nfs server available. We certainly don't do nfs here.
If this isn't your first install, you are a couple of commands away from having one. Faster/easier than burning yet another iso or 7.
That makes the assumption I haven't done/don't do http installs...... nfs isn't the only netinstall method. We just don't do nfs.
Nfs is the only one that works with the raw iso images as downloaded - unless I've missed something. Just download into a directory with nfs read access, boot something that gets to the netinstall options and you are done.
Les Mikesell wrote:
That makes the assumption that there is an nfs server available. We certainly don't do nfs here.
If this isn't your first install, you are a couple of commands away from having one. Faster/easier than burning yet another iso or 7.
That makes the assumption I haven't done/don't do http installs...... nfs isn't the only netinstall method. We just don't do nfs.
Nfs is the only one that works with the raw iso images as downloaded - unless I've missed something.
I think I could have done it with http, at least it linked to my web-server. But I agree with you that NFS is much the easier way.
On 9.4.2011 01:42, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I think I could have done it with http, at least it linked to my web-server. But I agree with you that NFS is much the easier way.
NFS method requires you to run a nfs server. This is not easy if you are not running nfs service at your site. You have to setup nfs service and you have to download stuff and you need the storage and you need the bandwidth.
HTTP installs could be pointed to official centos mirrors if you have a working internet access. No local mirror needed. No need for a local service, no need to download stuff. This sounds easier to me.
On 4/9/11 5:13 AM, Markus Falb wrote:
I think I could have done it with http, at least it linked to my web-server. But I agree with you that NFS is much the easier way.
NFS method requires you to run a nfs server. This is not easy if you are not running nfs service at your site. You have to setup nfs service and you have to download stuff and you need the storage and you need the bandwidth.
You make it sound like a hard thing to do. It is a couple of commands and putting the directory to share in a file. Something you could easily do on a laptop if nothing already exists, but in most places it is extremely convenient to have one or more directories that are shared by both samba and nfs so you can download or copy files from any OS and access them from another without having to set up something special each time.
HTTP installs could be pointed to official centos mirrors if you have a working internet access. No local mirror needed. No need for a local service, no need to download stuff. This sounds easier to me.
Maybe, if you have extremely fast and reliable internet service. I don't think you can pick up where you stopped after an error. Everyone's situation is different, but disk space is usually cheaper than internet capacity and you can use bittorrent to let the CD isos dribble in over about any kind of connection - and once you have them, you can carry them with you on a laptop drive (or a phone's micro-sd these days...). Anyway, my impression is that for installing your 2nd through some moderately large number of machines that don't have DVD drives, an nfs install is as easy as it gets. For very large numbers where you don't clone disk images you would probably set up local repositories and something like cobbler to control pxe booting to a kickstart file. (You can use kickstart anyway, but without the pxe boot you have to type in the url to the file that you've dropped under a web server).
Phil Schaffner wrote:
You are welcome to debate that with the LiveCD maintainer, or to roll your own version including the option, but as a guy who has spent a lot of time answering the newbies on the forum who got tripped up by it, I fully support the decision.
If you feel that, why not just call it "NFS Install" instead of "Network Install".
To my mind, you should allow as many ways of installing CentOS as possible. As my recent experience shows, this is much more difficult than it should be on a machine without a CD/DVD reader.
Phil Schaffner wrote:
Because network installs tend to be problematic for all but those with local repositories or flawless broadband network connections. Having it present was raising unrealistic expectations of netinstall as a viable option, and resulting in bad first experiences with CentOS and a large support burden.
That seems completely misguided to me, since it is perfectly simple to use with the DVD ISO on a local machine. Why not simply warn people if you think a local ISO is the safest way?
The alternative dd method described in the CentOS Installation Guide (but not the RedHat one) does not appear to me to work, and the only other way I see to install CentOS on a machine without a CD drive (the method described in the RedHat Installation Guide) is absurdly long-winded.
On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
Phil Schaffner wrote:
Because network installs tend to be problematic for all but those with local repositories or flawless broadband network connections. Having it present was raising unrealistic expectations of netinstall as a viable option, and resulting in bad first experiences with CentOS and a large support burden.
That seems completely misguided to me, since it is perfectly simple to use with the DVD ISO on a local machine. Why not simply warn people if you think a local ISO is the safest way?
The alternative dd method described in the CentOS Installation Guide (but not the RedHat one) does not appear to me to work, and the only other way I see to install CentOS on a machine without a CD drive (the method described in the RedHat Installation Guide) is absurdly long-winded.
Forgive me if I've missed it mentioned, but it looks like the option is only being removed from the LiveCD. Using the netinstall.iso is still available and would be a more efficient way of doing network installs anyway (9.5M vs 685M).
Unless things have changed since I messed with network installs (which is has been a while), all you really need is some way to boot the kernel and initrd files. It doesn't matter if you start with grub, lilo, syslinux, etc. I remember using the boot loader of an existing system to start the network install (but I don't remember what version it was) on a machine without a working optical drive.
The issues you saw with grub being installed on the USB stick instead of the HDD are a bigger concern in my book. I wonder if you you have better luck installing GRUB on the HDD MBR, booting from the HDD and using grub to load the kernel and initrd off the USB stick.
William Hooper wrote on 04/08/2011 03:50 PM:
Forgive me if I've missed it mentioned, but it looks like the option is only being removed from the LiveCD. Using the netinstall.iso is still available and would be a more efficient way of doing network installs anyway (9.5M vs 685M).
Precisely.
Unless things have changed since I messed with network installs (which is has been a while), all you really need is some way to boot the kernel and initrd files. It doesn't matter if you start with grub, lilo, syslinux, etc. I remember using the boot loader of an existing system to start the network install (but I don't remember what version it was) on a machine without a working optical drive.
Still works - can just copy vmlinuz and initrd.img from the images/pxeboot/ or isolinux/ directories and add a GRUB (or whatever bootloader) stanza to boot them.
The issues you saw with grub being installed on the USB stick instead of the HDD are a bigger concern in my book. I wonder if you you have better luck installing GRUB on the HDD MBR, booting from the HDD and using grub to load the kernel and initrd off the USB stick.
That is a known issue and is addressed in the Wiki article: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
Phil
Phil Schaffner wrote:
Forgive me if I've missed it mentioned, but it looks like the option is only being removed from the LiveCD. Using the netinstall.iso is still available and would be a more efficient way of doing network installs anyway (9.5M vs 685M).
Precisely.
In my case, at least, I would always run a Live CD before installing an OS, just to make sure it runs OK. So a person might well have a Live USB stick anyway.
You really need to consider that people may not be in exactly the same position as yourself.
Unless things have changed since I messed with network installs (which is has been a while), all you really need is some way to boot the kernel and initrd files. It doesn't matter if you start with grub, lilo, syslinux, etc.
This isn't as easy as you say, as the RHEL instructions illustrate: http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/.
Still works - can just copy vmlinuz and initrd.img from the images/pxeboot/ or isolinux/ directories and add a GRUB (or whatever bootloader) stanza to boot them.
So you believe this newbie who is confused by NFS is going to follow that advice?
The issues you saw with grub being installed on the USB stick instead of the HDD are a bigger concern in my book. I wonder if you you have better luck installing GRUB on the HDD MBR, booting from the HDD and using grub to load the kernel and initrd off the USB stick.
That is a known issue and is addressed in the Wiki article: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 8:56 PM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
Phil Schaffner wrote:
Forgive me if I've missed it mentioned, but it looks like the option is only being removed from the LiveCD. Using the netinstall.iso is still available and would be a more efficient way of doing network installs anyway (9.5M vs 685M).
Precisely.
In my case, at least, I would always run a Live CD before installing an OS, just to make sure it runs OK. So a person might well have a Live USB stick anyway.
This is a valid point.
What booting system does the LiveCD use after transferring it to the USB stick? Perhaps a middle ground would be to create a wiki page on how to add the netinstall kernel/initrd to your own media.
Unless things have changed since I messed with network installs (which is has been a while), all you really need is some way to boot the kernel and initrd files. It doesn't matter if you start with grub, lilo, syslinux, etc.
This isn't as easy as you say, as the RHEL instructions illustrate: http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Installation_Guide/.
All I see there are instructions for the various methods of booting a kernel and initrd files from different media (or via PXE). As I said, if you can get the device to boot off the kernel you specify that is all you need, no special sauce required.
Still works - can just copy vmlinuz and initrd.img from the images/pxeboot/ or isolinux/ directories and add a GRUB (or whatever bootloader) stanza to boot them.
So you believe this newbie who is confused by NFS is going to follow that advice?
I didn't make the above statement, but I expect a newbie will probably have or will obtain a working optical drive.
On the other hand, knowing how to create a linux boot media is probably a good lesson to learn. Newbies don't become experts by magic, they do it by learning new skills.
William Hooper wrote:
Still works - can just copy vmlinuz and initrd.img from the images/pxeboot/ or isolinux/ directories and add a GRUB (or whatever bootloader) stanza to boot them.
So you believe this newbie who is confused by NFS is going to follow that advice?
I didn't make the above statement, but I expect a newbie will probably have or will obtain a working optical drive.
I suspect that the lack of a CD/DVD drive on the HP microserver is probably part, or perhaps the start, of a trend. Logically, there seems very little reason today to have such a drive, so I assume they will die out like floppy disks and PS/2 mice.
On the other hand, knowing how to create a linux boot media is probably a good lesson to learn. Newbies don't become experts by magic, they do it by learning new skills.
I would have thought learning how to use NFS was much more useful than playing with grub and initrd.
On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 10:04 PM, William Hooper whooperhsd@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 8:56 PM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
In my case, at least, I would always run a Live CD before installing an OS, just to make sure it runs OK. So a person might well have a Live USB stick anyway.
This is a valid point.
What booting system does the LiveCD use after transferring it to the USB stick? Perhaps a middle ground would be to create a wiki page on how to add the netinstall kernel/initrd to your own media.
I did some testing to answer my own question. As I expected, adding the option back yourself on a USB stick is trivial (for a CD you would have to complete your own isolinux burn, so it is a little more involved, but the same basic steps). I believe most Linux bootable USB sticks use syslinux, so these steps would work with them, also.
1) Create Live USB stick as before
2) Edit the isolinux/isolinux.cfg or syslinux/syslinux.cfg on the USB stick to add a stanza to boot the installer kernel (this example taken from the 5.5 LiveCD) ====start here===== label installer menu label Network Installation kernel vminst append initrd=install.img text ====stop here=====
3) Copy the kernel/initrd images from any mirror onto the USB stick (making sure they are named the same as your stanza above): http://centos.mirror.netriplex.com/5.6/os/i386/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz -> syslinux/vminst http://centos.mirror.netriplex.com/5.6/os/i386/images/pxeboot/initrd.img -> syslinux/install.img
4) Boot to USB stick, press space to get the menu, choose whatever you labeled your stanza (in this case "Network Installation".
I believe that the installer still changes for each point release, so you would have to make sure the kernel/initrd is for the specific release you want. In fact, this would let you create a number of different stanzas so that you could boot the installers for multiple versions if you wanted to (Fedora 14, CentOS 5.6, and CentOS 6.0 for example).
On 7 Apr 2011, at 00:18, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
If anyone can suggest a simpler way of installing CentOS on a machine without a CD drive I should be interested to hear.
I keep a USB CD drive to hand for servers without optical drives. Slightly defeatist but much easier; just used for install and then returned to the cupboard.
Ben
-
Benjamin Donnachie -
Lamar Owen -
Les Mikesell -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Markus Falb -
Phil Schaffner -
Timothy Murphy -
Tom Grace -
William Hooper