On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:21 pm, Per Jessen wrote:
HG wrote:
Network boot would be ok, but it's too hard for me to set up with SUSE.
At work I run a cluster of netbooting nodes, at home I have a little (MiniITX) server without CDrom. Setting up a complete network install system isn't hard. Your client machine's network card does PXE? Good, lets go: On the server machine you need the RPM "dhcp-server" See "man dhcpd.conf" and set up dhcpd by configuring /etc/dhcpd.conf Add these lines to /etc/dhcpd.conf server-name "10.0.0.6"; next-server 10.0.0.6; filename "pxelinux.0"; Start dhcpd. You need the RPM "atftp" (instead of tftp) Start atftpd. You need the RPM "syslinux" Copy /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /tftpboot/ Make a directory /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg make a file /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default and put this into it: default yast label yast kernel suse10.1-vmlinuz-linux32.gz append load_ramdisk=1 initrd=suse10.1-inst32 install=nfs://10.0.0.3/install/suse10.1/ Damn word-wrap; the line beginning "install" should be part of the line beginning "append" Get the Suse CDs and set up an installation source. NFS export it. (if you use FTP or HTTP, remember to change your install= to suit.) Copy the installer kernel and initrd into the TFTP source: cp /install/suse10.1/suseboot/inst32 /tftpboot/suse10.1-inst32 cp /install/suse10.1/suseboot/linux32.gz /tftpboot/suse10.1-linux32.gz I think those are the right files, I'm guessing, it's different in 9.3. And anyway you all probably have 64 bit machines by now. MTNA (make the necessary adjustments) Plug your CD-less machine into the private network with the server you just built set the client's BIOS to PXE boot (F12 on Dells) and go for it. If you put a tail on /var/log/messages on the server machine, "tail -f /var/log/messages" then you can see it all happen. If it can't get an IP number when DHCP starts spinning the cursor, it could be cables, could be dhcpd. If it isn't being told a file to get it's dhcpd.conf If it can't get the file it's atftpd. Use "atftp -r pxelinux.0 localhost" to test your tftp server. (check permissions in /tftpboot; atftpd is strict) If it can't get the kernel, you either mistyped something in /etc/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default or misnamed it in /tftpboot Ditto the initrd file. If that doesn't give you a working YaST installer, then I guessed wrong about those inst32 files. Sorry, I'm off home now to try it myself, Happy Easter! michaelj -- Michael James michael.james@csiro.au System Administrator voice: 02 6246 5040 CSIRO Bioinformatics Facility fax: 02 6246 5166 No matter how much you pay for software, you always get less than you hoped. Unless you pay nothing, then you get more.