[CentOS] Network Installation of CentOS disk image via PXE
Ross S. W. Walker
rwalker at medallion.com
Sat Feb 9 18:48:04 UTC 2008
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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