[CentOS] Netinstall & NFS using local server.

Wed Jan 5 17:15:57 UTC 2011
Rajagopal Swaminathan <raju.rajsand at gmail.com>

Greetings,

On 1/5/11, Lisandro Grullon <lgrullon at citytech.cuny.edu> wrote:
> I am learning Centos from the ground up,
> I need to learn how to install this via NFS.
> I am aware that FTp and HTTP and options available, but what is the point of
> having NFS during the install if it doesn't work.

Now, Let us distinguish between first install in any setup and future
installs/re-installs

Now the first install part. This is the long way. at least. full
install preferred. once and highly recommended -- helps later in
troubleshooting network scenario quickly through the first machine.
Let us call this Machine FirstFullCentos for this example.

Now one needs an existing server -- say like FirstFullCentos to carry
out further installs.

Of course

> I need to find a way to
> get the installation going at least for learning purposes. If you have any
> clues give me a hand, I am not planning to have to running in my environment
> but at least i would have the concept under my belt. Thank you.
>
>>>> Nico Kadel-Garcia  01/04/11 7:25 PM >>>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Lisandro Grullon
>  wrote:
>> Dear CentOS community,
>> I have install centos via CD, DVD and Directly off the net via http and
>> FTP.
>> Now I want to do a NFS install from a local server and a client. Both,
>> client and server are in the same vlan 10.14.10.0/255.255.255.0.
>
> *Don't*. From painful experience, the NFS is very fragile to local
> network interruptions and tends to leave unreleased mountpoints
> reported on the NFS server, which makes getting meaningful monitoring
> of the server quite awkward.

HUmmm.. did you say in NFS udp mode?

>
>> The server has a static 10.14.10.15 address and the client gets its own
>> address via DHCP. I download the DVD image from one of the mirrors and
>> placed it under /centos-media/centosdvd32/DVD/CentOS-5.5-i386-bin-DVD.iso
>> which is a dedicated partition on the server to hold all images. After
>> that
>> I exported the usual entries under /etc/exports and reloaded NFS using
>> /sbin/service nfs reload. This is what my exports file looks like:
>>
>> [root at zeus DVD]# cat /etc/exports
>> /centos-media/centosdvd64 10.14.10.0/255.255.255.0(ro,sync,all_squash)
>> /centos-media/centosdvd32/DVD 10.14.10.0/255.255.255.0(ro,sync,all_squash)
>>
>> After doing so, I also modified the entries under IPtables to allow
>> traffic
>> in 111 and 2049 at the UDP/TCP level and restarted the service as shown
>> bellow.
>
> Oh, dear. This sort of thing is requirement is why you simply run a
> light FTP or HTTP server and make it accessible that way. It's
> nominally slower, but the difference is hardly noticeable.
>
>> [root at zeus DVD]# cat /etc/sysconfig/iptables
>> # Firewall configuration written by system-config-securitylevel
>> # Manual customization of this file is not recommended.
>> *filter
>> :INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
>> :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
>> :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
>> :RH-Firewall-1-INPUT - [0:0]
>> -A INPUT -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
>> -A FORWARD -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type any -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 50 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 51 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j
>> ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p tcp
>> --dport
>> 2049 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p tcp
>> --dport
>> 111 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p udp
>> --dport
>> 2049 -j ACCEPT
>> -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -s 10.14.10.0/24 -m state --state NEW -p udp
>> --dport
>> 111 -j ACCEPT
>> COMMIT
>>
>> [root at zeus DVD]# /sbin/service iptables restart
>>
>> When I try loading the net-install disc from the client i get to the area
>> where I specify the Ip of the server and the NFS path in the server,
>> hitting
>> enter returns "That directory does not seem to contain CentOS installation
>> tree", I triple check the ISO and I know its there with all appropriate
>> permissions. Can someone tell me what am I missing? I have spend all day
>> trying to get NFS working in the local vlan, i know that all ports are
>> open
>> within the vlan at the routers level. Any clues?
>
> What is the actual path you are giving it? Are you looking at the top
> of the relevant NFS exported directory? And did you pout all the
> contents of the ISO image there, are are you doing somehing stranger?

Did you mount the ISO at the /centos-media/centosdvd64 mountpoint on
10.14.10.15?

Couldn't locate the output of your mount command on 10.14.10.15.

what can say, anyways HTH,

Regards,

Rajagopal