At Stratus, I tried the PXE approach and instead chose to create an isolinux-based CD with a few boot label targets to specify the variety of XML files we need... At our place, the developers do not control the DHCP server for the corporation, and so it was painful to get PXE to work -- private LAN and/or hacking the DHCP server for a subnet only (to respond to PXE)... The CD approach has been hugely successful and flexible. It eliminates the need to muck with DHCP/PXE, and you only have to set up an installation source (we use http:). The only problem is that if a target PC has the CD drive above the hard disk (in BIOS boot list), you can get into an infinite loop of reinstalling the machine on each reboot. Even when I added an "eject" command into my chroot or pre-install script, these darn drives pull the CD back into the machine when it resets/reboots! (anyone remember the "infinite mirrors" from the 1970s? :) :) ) -----Original Message----- From: Campbell, Fraser [mailto:Fraser.Campbell@tdsecurities.com] Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 8:42 PM To: suse-autoinstall@lists.suse.com Subject: RE: [suse-autoinstall] chroot-scripts not running Anas Nashif wrote:

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As part of my auto-install I have a <chroot-scripts> script which notifies a server to remove the PXE boot file from the tftp server (that way, next time I boot the new machine, it won't try to run the install again). The chroot-script is the following:

A normal boot with dhcp enabled will not trigger a PXE install, why are you PXE booting your machine after the initial install?

It will reuse the same dhcp configuration it got for the installation, so it restarts installation. This is a well known problem with autoinstallation in general.

Ahhh. On my servers I specifically select a one-time network boot (I press F12) to do the PXE install, after that first install the server boots from local disk (automatically, no intervention). If your machines don't let you do the one-time network boot then yes that would be a pain :-( Fraser -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-autoinstall-help@suse.com