[opensuse] Live USB and bulk install
In the past I've only ever had to install Linux on single machines at a time, but a new client has raised the question of doing a bulk install on many (more than 20, possibly as many as a hundred) workstations. Step and repeat, all the same. Rather than the long work off an installation DVD, I'm wondering... Is is possible to set up what amount to a LiveUSB stick, (Yes I've seen https://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick) boot from it, then use 'dd' to copy the stick to the hard drive, and then finally do some magic to make the new Linux on the hard drive bootable? Just a few minutes work.inux on the hard drive bootable? Yes I appreciate that I'll have to do much setup before hands for the server that handles the logins and configure the various files on the stick-image. In an ideal world I want to be able to make a couple or more of these sticks and give them to the clients IT staff - or at least the ones enthusiastic about Linux/Suse in the future - with a set of idiot poof instructions. Hopefully that way the "hundred or so" that the manager talks about can be accomplished in a few hours. Then we're down to the step-and-repeat of testing. Of course no-one is going to test a machine he did the install on :-0 -- The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur. - A.N. Whitehead -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Anton Aylward wrote:
In the past I've only ever had to install Linux on single machines at a time, but a new client has raised the question of doing a bulk install on many (more than 20, possibly as many as a hundred) workstations. Step and repeat, all the same.
AutoYaST ? If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (7.8°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 03/20/2013 02:56 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
Anton Aylward wrote:
In the past I've only ever had to install Linux on single machines at a time, but a new client has raised the question of doing a bulk install on many (more than 20, possibly as many as a hundred) workstations. Step and repeat, all the same. AutoYaST ?
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
like : tar clf - . | ( umask 0; cd /mnt; tar xvf - ) ........................................... best regards -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
ellanios82 said the following on 03/20/2013 09:01 AM:
On 03/20/2013 02:56 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
________________
like :
tar clf - . | ( umask 0; cd /mnt; tar xvf - )
HA HA HA! So what happens when the tree-walker-that-is-TAR gets to /mnt? This is why I was thinking of using DD. -- Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities, sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face. --Murray Gell-Mann (Quark and the Jaguar) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Anton Aylward wrote:
ellanios82 said the following on 03/20/2013 09:01 AM:
On 03/20/2013 02:56 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
________________
like :
tar clf - . | ( umask 0; cd /mnt; tar xvf - )
HA HA HA!
So what happens when the tree-walker-that-is-TAR gets to /mnt?
This is why I was thinking of using DD.
Well, using 'dd' means that source and target will have the same physical layout. What I have done in the past (for a lot less machines though): install machine#0, configure etc. Boot up a rescue system, create tar-copy of the installed system. Put tar-copy on USB or elsewhere where it is easily accessible. for m in machine[123456789] do boot rescue, partition, create filesystem, mount, untar. configure MAC-address. run lilo done -- Per Jessen, Zürich (7.7°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Per Jessen said the following on 03/20/2013 01:25 PM:
Anton Aylward wrote:
ellanios82 said the following on 03/20/2013 09:01 AM:
On 03/20/2013 02:56 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
________________
like :
tar clf - . | ( umask 0; cd /mnt; tar xvf - )
HA HA HA!
So what happens when the tree-walker-that-is-TAR gets to /mnt?
This is why I was thinking of using DD.
Well, using 'dd' means that source and target will have the same physical layout.
What I have done in the past (for a lot less machines though):
install machine#0, configure etc. Boot up a rescue system, create tar-copy of the installed system. Put tar-copy on USB or elsewhere where it is easily accessible.
for m in machine[123456789] do boot rescue, partition, create filesystem, mount, untar. configure MAC-address. run lilo done
I'm not sure we're talking the same thing. * what does 'boot rescue' mean? * 'create file system' where * 'mount' what where and how? I'm assuming that what you mean is 1. Take the bootable usb to the target machine and boot with it 2. Run fdisk on the target machine's hard disk to set up swap and FS 3. Run mkswap & mkfs on the targets machine's hard drive 4. do magic. I suspect the magic involves having a machine image - what you are terming the tar file - as well as the bootable image on the usb stick. I'd expect that tar file to be about 10G, so we have a non-trivial usb stick, call a 32G. Is this what you mean? COS IT ISN'T WHAT I WAS THINKING OF! I was assuming that the same image that I was running on the USB stick could be 'ghosted' onto the hard drive. Yes that raises questions about the disk layout but its fast! I was aiming for "Fast and Simple" maybe doing this over lunch. For a hundred machines with five sticks. FAST! So I'm interesting hearing other ways of doing it. -- "The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Anton Aylward wrote:
Per Jessen said the following on 03/20/2013 01:25 PM:
What I have done in the past (for a lot less machines though):
install machine#0, configure etc. Boot up a rescue system, create tar-copy of the installed system. Put tar-copy on USB or elsewhere where it is easily accessible.
for m in machine[123456789] do boot rescue, partition, create filesystem, mount, untar. configure MAC-address. run lilo done
I'm not sure we're talking the same thing.
* what does 'boot rescue' mean?
Boot a rescue mini-system, could be just the openSUSE NET install system.
* 'create file system' where
On the partition to be installed. (implicitly created with fdisk).
* 'mount' what where and how?
Mount the newly created filesystem on /mnt.
I'm assuming that what you mean is
1. Take the bootable usb to the target machine and boot with it 2. Run fdisk on the target machine's hard disk to set up swap and FS 3. Run mkswap & mkfs on the targets machine's hard drive 4. do magic.
Yep, that's about it. The bootable/rescue USB could be just the network install ISO. If you boot that with ssh=1, it will not auto-start yast.
I suspect the magic involves having a machine image - what you are terming the tar file
Correct.
- as well as the bootable image on the usb stick.
That is already booted, it's not needed for anything else.
I'd expect that tar file to be about 10G, so we have a non-trivial usb stick, call a 32G.
32Gb is not _that_ unusual, is it? 16Gb are readily available at the checkout in the local supermarket these days. I see a 64Gb stick is CHF39 at my usual supplier.
Is this what you mean?
COS IT ISN'T WHAT I WAS THINKING OF!
Ooops, sorry. :-)
I was assuming that the same image that I was running on the USB stick could be 'ghosted' onto the hard drive. Yes that raises questions about the disk layout but its fast!
Not a lot faster than what I just described, methinks. The only difference I see is that your 'dd'-copy will automatically create the partition and the filesystem. When you assume a target disk format, you can easily script the partitioning (sfdisk) and filesystem creation, and run that from the install shell.
I was aiming for "Fast and Simple" maybe doing this over lunch. For a hundred machines with five sticks. FAST!
If a system image is 20Gb uncompressed, copying it from USB to harddisk will take at least 10 minutes (USB 2.0), most probably longer. Anyway, like I said, no big difference between the two methods. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (7.6°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 19:37 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Anton Aylward wrote:
Per Jessen said the following on 03/20/2013 01:25 PM:
What I have done in the past (for a lot less machines though):
install machine#0, configure etc. Boot up a rescue system, create tar-copy of the installed system. Put tar-copy on USB or elsewhere where it is easily accessible.
for m in machine[123456789] do boot rescue, partition, create filesystem, mount, untar. configure MAC-address. run lilo done
I'm not sure we're talking the same thing.
* what does 'boot rescue' mean?
Boot a rescue mini-system, could be just the openSUSE NET install system.
KIWI has an option to make a rescue partition on the install system. Not sure what that really does.
Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
See below ;=)
-----Original Message-----
From: Anton Aylward
Anton Aylward wrote:
ellanios82 said the following on 03/20/2013 09:01 AM:
On 03/20/2013 02:56 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
________________
like :
tar clf - . | ( umask 0; cd /mnt; tar xvf - )
HA HA HA!
So what happens when the tree-walker-that-is-TAR gets to /mnt?
This is why I was thinking of using DD.
Well, using 'dd' means that source and target will have the same physical layout.
What I have done in the past (for a lot less machines though):
install machine#0, configure etc. Boot up a rescue system, create tar-copy of the installed system. Put tar-copy on USB or elsewhere where it is easily accessible.
for m in machine[123456789] do boot rescue, partition, create filesystem, mount, untar. configure MAC-address. run lilo done
I'm not sure we're talking the same thing. * what does 'boot rescue' mean? * 'create file system' where * 'mount' what where and how? I'm assuming that what you mean is 1. Take the bootable usb to the target machine and boot with it 2. Run fdisk on the target machine's hard disk to set up swap and FS 3. Run mkswap & mkfs on the targets machine's hard drive 4. do magic. I suspect the magic involves having a machine image - what you are terming the tar file - as well as the bootable image on the usb stick. I'd expect that tar file to be about 10G, so we have a non-trivial usb stick, call a 32G. Is this what you mean? COS IT ISN'T WHAT I WAS THINKING OF! I was assuming that the same image that I was running on the USB stick could be 'ghosted' onto the hard drive. Yes that raises questions about the disk layout but its fast! I was aiming for "Fast and Simple" maybe doing this over lunch. For a hundred machines with five sticks. FAST! So I'm interesting hearing other ways of doing it. -----Original Message----- Before embarking on this trip.... We have about 100 DELL and HP-G7 machines With 64-cores and 512GB mem, certainly not "thin", but still we use PXE and autoyast to install them. When power-cycling, from "OFF" till fully installed and updated, most of the time is taken by the BIOS. hw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:03:13 Hans Witvliet wrote:
...
I'm not sure we're talking the same thing.
* what does 'boot rescue' mean? * 'create file system' where * 'mount' what where and how?
I'm assuming that what you mean is
1. Take the bootable usb to the target machine and boot with it 2. Run fdisk on the target machine's hard disk to set up swap and FS 3. Run mkswap & mkfs on the targets machine's hard drive 4. do magic.
I suspect the magic involves having a machine image - what you are terming the tar file - as well as the bootable image on the usb stick. I'd expect that tar file to be about 10G, so we have a non-trivial usb stick, call a 32G.
Is this what you mean?
COS IT ISN'T WHAT I WAS THINKING OF!
I was assuming that the same image that I was running on the USB stick could be 'ghosted' onto the hard drive. Yes that raises questions about the disk layout but its fast! I was aiming for "Fast and Simple" maybe doing this over lunch. For a hundred machines with five sticks. FAST!
So I'm interesting hearing other ways of doing it.
I have used dd to do this. If you google ghosting and linux you should get some hits. Clonezilla comes to mind (can't recall ever using it). Using something like dd is very fast and partition alignment of different drive sizes might be the only issue to work out before hand. I have also used methods similar to the one you "weren't thinking of" - boot floppy that connects to the network to download install scripts and rsync, partition based on drive found on board, rsync the template OS onto the hard drive, assign ID and addresses, boot new host. This is also pretty fast. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Hans Witvliet wrote:
Before embarking on this trip.... We have about 100 DELL and HP-G7 machines With 64-cores and 512GB mem, certainly not "thin", but still we use PXE and autoyast to install them. When power-cycling, from "OFF" till fully installed and updated, most of the time is taken by the BIOS.
I second that. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (4.6°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 23:23 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Hans Witvliet wrote:
Before embarking on this trip.... We have about 100 DELL and HP-G7 machines With 64-cores and 512GB mem, certainly not "thin", but still we use PXE and autoyast to install them. When power-cycling, from "OFF" till fully installed and updated, most of the time is taken by the BIOS.
I second that.
kiwi can also do this via PXE. I think Autoyast and kiwi share many concepts. I think kiwi is more flexible. Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Oberholtzer
Hans Witvliet wrote:
Before embarking on this trip.... We have about 100 DELL and HP-G7 machines With 64-cores and 512GB mem, certainly not "thin", but still we use PXE and autoyast to install them. When power-cycling, from "OFF" till fully installed and updated, most of the time is taken by the BIOS.
I second that.
kiwi can also do this via PXE. I think Autoyast and kiwi share many concepts. I think kiwi is more flexible. -----Original Message----- Yes, i agree that KIWI is a wonderful product. I used it for making bootable mem-sticks, with only a CA on it, that i can easily keep in my vault. However, when you need to install a large number of systems, you often don't need the flexibility, unless each system is installed in a completely different way. I got the impression that one wanted to install them (almost) identically, without any [time consuming] human interaction. Like: inserting lan-cable, vga/keyboard, power-cable, turn-on, press F12, select xml, and up to the next one. And no fiddling with software selection, users, lan-devices or partition tables.... hw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 23:23 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Hans Witvliet wrote:
Before embarking on this trip.... We have about 100 DELL and HP-G7 machines With 64-cores and 512GB mem, certainly not "thin", but still we use PXE and autoyast to install them. When power-cycling, from "OFF" till fully installed and updated, most of the time is taken by the BIOS.
I second that.
kiwi can also do this via PXE. I think Autoyast and kiwi share many concepts. I think kiwi is more flexible.
I was more referring to Hans' last sentence about time taken. Wrt kiwi, yes, it does sound like autoyast and kiwi share a number of features. I haven't played with kiwi at all, maybe I'll need to take a closer look. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (5.4°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 18:25 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Anton Aylward wrote:
ellanios82 said the following on 03/20/2013 09:01 AM:
On 03/20/2013 02:56 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
________________
like :
tar clf - . | ( umask 0; cd /mnt; tar xvf - )
HA HA HA!
So what happens when the tree-walker-that-is-TAR gets to /mnt?
This is why I was thinking of using DD.
Well, using 'dd' means that source and target will have the same physical layout.
Not really. kiwi is a bit smarter than that. It lays out the partitions on the target disk according to the sizes requested, and then fills them (so to speak). I think the only requirement is that the disk is big enough. I set up my OEM images to have a 32 GB /, a swap, and the rest of the disk as /home. So the only requirement is that there is space for / and /swap. The rest is dynamic.
What I have done in the past (for a lot less machines though):
install machine#0, configure etc. Boot up a rescue system, create tar-copy of the installed system. Put tar-copy on USB or elsewhere where it is easily accessible.
for m in machine[123456789] do boot rescue, partition, create filesystem, mount, untar. configure MAC-address. run lilo done
The nice thing about the kiwi OEM image is that after kiwi installs it on the disk, it can run whatever remaining install components you want. I run things like the locale stuff. You can have it run the openSUSE install boot loader component if you want. Each of the install components are optionally available. Quite flexible really.
-- Per Jessen, Zürich (7.7°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland.
Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Per Jessen said the following on 03/20/2013 08:56 AM:
Anton Aylward wrote:
In the past I've only ever had to install Linux on single machines at a time, but a new client has raised the question of doing a bulk install on many (more than 20, possibly as many as a hundred) workstations. Step and repeat, all the same.
AutoYaST ?
As far as I can make out that's an 'automated install'. It may be great as far as, if they are al the same machine, also doing non-trivial tasks like disk partitioning, which is something I have to consider, but its still the long install process. The network as a 'source' may or may not be available. In the limiting case it may be that I use my own laptop as a 'source'.
If that's too much effort for a one-off, and if the machines are all the same, how about installing one and then cloning it? Just a tar-copy will do.
At this point I don't know; I suspect the whole lot are not all the same... that would be too fortunate! In effect the LiveUSB+dd is much the same as a TAR copy? My point is that this has to be in situ, by Linux-ignorant people, fast, probably in a three hour window one Sunday morning. (Or some other suitable downtime such as a public holiday.) I look at things like this http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:KIWI_Cookbook_Live_USB-Stick and wonder.... Surely I can treat the system I get from running the LiveUDB as 'the system' and the had disk as the USB (HA HA HA) so that the final <quote> dd if=/tmp/myusb/image/suse-11.1-live-stick.i686-1.1.2.raw \ of= bs=32 </quote> does the job. Hmm. Need a large, very large, usb stick for that. I was thinking more of dd-ing the whole of the USB stick. -- Most good crime on this planet involves insiders. -- Bruce Schneier -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 08:51 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:
In the past I've only ever had to install Linux on single machines at a time, but a new client has raised the question of doing a bulk install on many (more than 20, possibly as many as a hundred) workstations. Step and repeat, all the same.
Rather than the long work off an installation DVD, I'm wondering...
Is is possible to set up what amount to a LiveUSB stick, (Yes I've seen https://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick) boot from it, then use 'dd' to copy the stick to the hard drive, and then finally do some magic to make the new Linux on the hard drive bootable?
Just a few minutes work.inux on the hard drive bootable?
Yes I appreciate that I'll have to do much setup before hands for the server that handles the logins and configure the various files on the stick-image.
In an ideal world I want to be able to make a couple or more of these sticks and give them to the clients IT staff - or at least the ones enthusiastic about Linux/Suse in the future - with a set of idiot poof instructions. Hopefully that way the "hundred or so" that the manager talks about can be accomplished in a few hours. Then we're down to the step-and-repeat of testing. Of course no-one is going to test a machine he did the install on :-0
I do exactly this. I build my images with kiwi. There you select what you want installed, and it makes many image types. The one you want is called OEM. It makes an image that is dd's to the disk, via either a bootable USB, DVD or via PXE. kiwi makes the entire thing - including the bootable GUI that does the DD. You can have as much set up as you would like. We use this so we can do identical installs on many machines, many of which do not have internet access. Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 03/20/2013 09:44 AM:
In an ideal world I want to be able to make a couple or more of these sticks and give them to the clients IT staff - or at least the ones enthusiastic about Linux/Suse in the future - with a set of idiot poof instructions. Hopefully that way the "hundred or so" that the manager talks about can be accomplished in a few hours. Then we're down to the step-and-repeat of testing. Of course no-one is going to test a machine he did the install on :-0
I do exactly this. I build my images with kiwi. There you select what you want installed, and it makes many image types. The one you want is called OEM. It makes an image that is dd's to the disk, via either a bootable USB, DVD or via PXE. kiwi makes the entire thing - including the bootable GUI that does the DD. You can have as much set up as you would like. We use this so we can do identical installs on many machines, many of which do not have internet access.
Thanks, Robert; I'm glad I wasn't 'just dreaming'. I'll follow up off list. -- It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue. -- Charles Babbage -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 03/20/2013 10:44 AM, Anton Aylward pecked at the keyboard and wrote:
Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 03/20/2013 09:44 AM:
In an ideal world I want to be able to make a couple or more of these sticks and give them to the clients IT staff - or at least the ones enthusiastic about Linux/Suse in the future - with a set of idiot poof instructions. Hopefully that way the "hundred or so" that the manager talks about can be accomplished in a few hours. Then we're down to the step-and-repeat of testing. Of course no-one is going to test a machine he did the install on :-0
I do exactly this. I build my images with kiwi. There you select what you want installed, and it makes many image types. The one you want is called OEM. It makes an image that is dd's to the disk, via either a bootable USB, DVD or via PXE. kiwi makes the entire thing - including the bootable GUI that does the DD. You can have as much set up as you would like. We use this so we can do identical installs on many machines, many of which do not have internet access.
Thanks, Robert; I'm glad I wasn't 'just dreaming'. I'll follow up off list.
Before I retired from the IT field we would install to a new harddrive and set everything the way we wanted, including the machine using DHCP and setting the host name via DHCP. We would then pull the drive and clone that drive to every other system we needed built the same. Seemed simple enough to me. And all of the machines were built with the same hardware to eliminate hardware config problems. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Ken Schneider - openSUSE said the following on 03/20/2013 10:56 AM:
Before I retired from the IT field we would install to a new harddrive and set everything the way we wanted, including the machine using DHCP and setting the host name via DHCP. We would then pull the drive and clone that drive to every other system we needed built the same. Seemed simple enough to me. And all of the machines were built with the same hardware to eliminate hardware config problems.
Seems simple enough to me as well. Except that the master image is the USB. Which makes me wonder about things like partition tables and booting. I suspect I'm going to be faced with a situation where not all the machines are exactly the same. I also think that the drives are going to be bigger than my USB stick. -- Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. --Timothy Jones -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 11:11 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:
Ken Schneider - openSUSE said the following on 03/20/2013 10:56 AM:
Before I retired from the IT field we would install to a new harddrive and set everything the way we wanted, including the machine using DHCP and setting the host name via DHCP. We would then pull the drive and clone that drive to every other system we needed built the same. Seemed simple enough to me. And all of the machines were built with the same hardware to eliminate hardware config problems.
Seems simple enough to me as well.
Except that the master image is the USB.
Which makes me wonder about things like partition tables and booting.
You have control over the partition tables. I have mine set up to make a certain / and /swap. Then it fills the rest of the disk with /home. There are many more options than I use, like setting up RAID and such.
I suspect I'm going to be faced with a situation where not all the machines are exactly the same. I also think that the drives are going to be bigger than my USB stick.
My image for a rather full openSUSE 12.1 is usually 4.1 GB. It compresses the DD image.
-- Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. --Timothy Jones
Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 10:56 -0400, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:
Before I retired from the IT field we would install to a new harddrive and set everything the way we wanted, including the machine using DHCP and setting the host name via DHCP. We would then pull the drive and clone that drive to every other system we needed built the same. Seemed simple enough to me. And all of the machines were built with the same hardware to eliminate hardware config problems.
This is effectively what kiwi does. In a folder on you computer. How you deploy that image is flexible. I forgot to mention that is also allows running it in VirtualBox to see how it works. Since the OS is pre-built, the time it takes to do the install is mainly a function of your USB memory or DVD device. Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 03/20/2013 09:44 AM:
I do exactly this. I build my images with kiwi. There you select what you want installed, and it makes many image types. The one you want is called OEM. It makes an image that is dd's to the disk, via either a bootable USB, DVD or via PXE. kiwi makes the entire thing - including the bootable GUI that does the DD. You can have as much set up as you would like. We use this so we can do identical installs on many machines, many of which do not have internet access.
This sounds like what I want, not least of all pick and choose: I suspect that PXE won't be an option, but my main concern is size and my second concern is partition. By size, I mean that the KIWI page seem to indicate that the the image lives in /tmp . So the USB stick needs to hold the bootable image plus the image to be transferred in /tmp. That means a very big stick. I've got a minimalist Linux running on a 2G stick (irony: they were handing out 2G sticks with a few meg of Docco at a a Novell/Suse seminar, so I've got green sticks with the logo that boot Suse. Good joke. Why can't they hand out sticks that boot Suse?) I've got suse 11.4 though 12.3 running on machines with drives as small as 20G. Client says these machines have drives 80G to 250G, but that just how they come; they can be wiped. I realise Autoyast can do fancy things but it seems like a lot of study and work and need some trials. My idea was a quick-and-dirty. I realise an image might not use all of the disk. Is that an issue for you? Then there's the partition table and the boot to worry about. How do you deal with that? Thanks... -- "To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right." -- Confucius -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Sorry, forget to delete .. -- As far as I know, we have never had an undetected error. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 11:08 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:
Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 03/20/2013 09:44 AM:
I do exactly this. I build my images with kiwi. There you select what you want installed, and it makes many image types. The one you want is called OEM. It makes an image that is dd's to the disk, via either a bootable USB, DVD or via PXE. kiwi makes the entire thing - including the bootable GUI that does the DD. You can have as much set up as you would like. We use this so we can do identical installs on many machines, many of which do not have internet access.
This sounds like what I want, not least of all pick and choose:
I suspect that PXE won't be an option, but my main concern is size and my second concern is partition.
By size, I mean that the KIWI page seem to indicate that the the image lives in /tmp . So the USB stick needs to hold the bootable image plus the image to be transferred in /tmp. That means a very big stick.
The place you build your kiwi image is up to you. Wherever you have space. I have a folder in my $HOME
I've got a minimalist Linux running on a 2G stick (irony: they were handing out 2G sticks with a few meg of Docco at a a Novell/Suse seminar, so I've got green sticks with the logo that boot Suse. Good joke. Why can't they hand out sticks that boot Suse?)
My smallest KIWI image is 200 MB. I use that image to boot diskless systems. The biggest is a rather complete OEM image that is 4.1 GB on USB. Oddly, it is 2.9 GB on DVD. The installed makes a 32 GB /, with 7.8 GB used by my packages, a standard /swap. In my case the install fills out the disk with /home. I could make / whatever size I want.
I've got suse 11.4 though 12.3 running on machines with drives as small as 20G.
Client says these machines have drives 80G to 250G, but that just how they come; they can be wiped. I realise Autoyast can do fancy things but it seems like a lot of study and work and need some trials. My idea was a quick-and-dirty. I realise an image might not use all of the disk. Is that an issue for you?
KIWI has a few very complete samples. You can build an OEM image out-of-the-box. It it mainly controlled by a straight forward XML file that you can clone and customize.
Then there's the partition table and the boot to worry about. How do you deal with that?
See above. There is a boot specification. I think you can also tell that you want the install boot menu to be shown if you do not want to have it hard-wired in your OEM image. I never do this. All I have enabled are: * keyboard * timezone * root password Your choice.
Thanks...
-- "To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right." -- Confucius
Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Roger Oberholtzer
On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 08:51 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:
In the past I've only ever had to install Linux on single machines at a time, but a new client has raised the question of doing a bulk install on many (more than 20, possibly as many as a hundred) workstations. Step and repeat, all the same.
Rather than the long work off an installation DVD, I'm wondering...
Is is possible to set up what amount to a LiveUSB stick, (Yes I've seen https://en.opensuse.org/Live_USB_stick) boot from it, then use 'dd' to copy the stick to the hard drive, and then finally do some magic to make the new Linux on the hard drive bootable?
Just a few minutes work.inux on the hard drive bootable?
Yes I appreciate that I'll have to do much setup before hands for the server that handles the logins and configure the various files on the stick-image.
In an ideal world I want to be able to make a couple or more of these sticks and give them to the clients IT staff - or at least the ones enthusiastic about Linux/Suse in the future - with a set of idiot poof instructions. Hopefully that way the "hundred or so" that the manager talks about can be accomplished in a few hours. Then we're down to the step-and-repeat of testing. Of course no-one is going to test a machine he did the install on :-0
I do exactly this. I build my images with kiwi. There you select what you want installed, and it makes many image types. The one you want is called OEM. It makes an image that is dd's to the disk, via either a bootable USB, DVD or via PXE. kiwi makes the entire thing - including the bootable GUI that does the DD. You can have as much set up as you would like. We use this so we can do identical installs on many machines, many of which do not have internet access.
I think susestudio is basically just a really nice WebUI to kiwi. I really think it should be investigated for this use case. I don't know if it can be used for the PXE boot images, but I don't see why not. http://susestudio.com/ Here's a 3 year old tutorial: http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/suse-studio.html Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (8)
-
Anton Aylward -
ellanios82 -
Greg Freemyer -
Hans Witvliet -
Ken Schneider - openSUSE -
michael＠actrix.gen.nz -
Per Jessen -
Roger Oberholtzer