Re: [SLE] 9.3 Pro Headless Install Possible?
Actually I became a little more interested in this so I did a quick search, and found this article on Novell's webiste about headless installs using VNC. The crux is you need to have a network environment setup in the remote location to support this type of installation which needs a copy of the installation source, a tftp and dhcp server, and the server itself prepared for PXE boot. Sorry if it's already been mentioned, I only joined the list recently. http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/tp10009.html Stephen Carter Retrac Networking Limited Ph: +44 (0)7870 218 693 Fax: +44 (0)870 7060 056 CNA, CNE, CNS, CCNA, MCP
"Stephen Carter" <stephen@retnet.co.uk> 05/25/05 9:17 AM >>> Mike Dewhirst <miked@dewhirst.com.au> 05/25/05 6:58 AM >>> Scott Leighton wrote: On Tuesday 24 May 2005 9:39 pm, Chadley Wilson wrote:
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 14:06, David McMillan wrote:
Scott Leighton wrote:
I've done some googling on headless installs and have only been able to find references to SLES having that capability by using pxe and VNC.
Does anyone know whether or not it is possible to do a headless install of 9.3 Pro, and if so, where there might be a howto on the subject?
Or 9.1 Pro, if I may be forgiven for piggybacking....
Use remote administration in yast to configure server, and install rdesktop on client. Connect like you would in vnc, else use ssh for just the cammand line, and you can run yast in a terminal.
I can't see how that can possibly work. Enabling remote administration in Yast would require that the headless machine have SuSE installed on it so I could enable it.
I know how to remotely administer, what I don't know is how to remotely install a new install to a headless box that is 3000 miles away from me in a datacenter that I have no physical access to. If I'm misunderstanding what you are suggesting, please do clear it up for me.
Scott
WIthout the datacentre providing a method of remote access to the box at the bios level it's not possible. For example, HP servers commonly use Integrated Lights Out boards that let you re-direct the floppy & CD/DVD drive of your local PC to the remote server, at which point you hard remotely hard reset the box, and it will boot using installation disc in your PC. You can also hard reset the box and access the BIOS menu using this method. The nice part is you access their boxes through a web browser which makes is very easy to manage remote boxes ni any state. I've also used Avocent KVM's which will give you remote keyboard, mouse and screen access but not removable media re-direction which wouldn't be any good in this case. The datacenter may have some other method and many will install a base OS for you, although they usually specify what OS's they are willing to install. It may be worth asking them what options you have available, as this is not an OS issue if I understand correctly. -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 11:32 +0100, Stephen Carter wrote:
Actually I became a little more interested in this so I did a quick search, and found this article on Novell's webiste about headless installs using VNC. The crux is you need to have a network environment setup in the remote location to support this type of installation which needs a copy of the installation source, a tftp and dhcp server, and the server itself prepared for PXE boot. Sorry if it's already been mentioned, I only joined the list recently.
This is great but still requires some user interaction. An IP based KVM would eliminate user intervention and allow bios access during the boot process. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 08:32 -0400, Ken Schneider wrote:
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 11:32 +0100, Stephen Carter wrote:
Actually I became a little more interested in this so I did a quick search, and found this article on Novell's webiste about headless installs using VNC. The crux is you need to have a network environment setup in the remote location to support this type of installation which needs a copy of the installation source, a tftp and dhcp server, and the server itself prepared for PXE boot. Sorry if it's already been mentioned, I only joined the list recently.
This is great but still requires some user interaction. An IP based KVM would eliminate user intervention and allow bios access during the boot process.
Also check chapter 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 in the 9.3 adminguide. There are instructions for using VNC in the install process, but this still requires some human intervention at the server being installed. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
On Wednesday 25 May 2005 6:25 am, Ken Schneider wrote:
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 08:32 -0400, Ken Schneider wrote:
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 11:32 +0100, Stephen Carter wrote:
Actually I became a little more interested in this so I did a quick search, and found this article on Novell's webiste about headless installs using VNC. The crux is you need to have a network environment setup in the remote location to support this type of installation which needs a copy of the installation source, a tftp and dhcp server, and the server itself prepared for PXE boot. Sorry if it's already been mentioned, I only joined the list recently.
This is great but still requires some user interaction. An IP based KVM would eliminate user intervention and allow bios access during the boot process.
Also check chapter 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 in the 9.3 adminguide. There are instructions for using VNC in the install process, but this still requires some human intervention at the server being installed.
Thanks to Ken, Stephen and Jerry for the useful pointers. I'm probably worrying needlessly here and the install will go fine using VNC. The only humans on the other side will be IT guys that are 100% windows oriented, but I should be able to get them to mount the DVD and type the neccessary commands to get me going with a VNC install. I was hoping not to have to involve them, don't want to give them any reasons to dislike Linux and certainly don't want my incompetence on display if there are problems with the install <g>. It's a few months away, but I'll report back on my success or failure. Thanks again! Scott -- POPFile, the OpenSource EMail Classifier http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ Linux 2.6.11.4-20a-default x86_64
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 18:20 -0700, Scott Leighton wrote:
Thanks to Ken, Stephen and Jerry for the useful pointers.
I'm probably worrying needlessly here and the install will go fine using VNC. The only humans on the other side will be IT guys that are 100% windows oriented, but I should be able to get them to mount the DVD and type the neccessary commands to get me going with a VNC install.
I was hoping not to have to involve them, don't want to give them any reasons to dislike Linux and certainly don't want my incompetence on display if there are problems with the install <g>.
It's a few months away, but I'll report back on my success or failure.
Thanks again!
Scott
There should not be any reason to hate linux but admire it for being able to install remotely. Not sure if MS can do that. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
On 5/25/05, Ken Schneider <suse-list@bout-tyme.net> wrote:
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 18:20 -0700, Scott Leighton wrote:
Thanks to Ken, Stephen and Jerry for the useful pointers.
I'm probably worrying needlessly here and the install will go fine using VNC. The only humans on the other side will be IT guys that are 100% windows oriented, but I should be able to get them to mount the DVD and type the neccessary commands to get me going with a VNC install.
I was hoping not to have to involve them, don't want to give them any reasons to dislike Linux and certainly don't want my incompetence on display if there are problems with the install <g>.
It's a few months away, but I'll report back on my success or failure.
Thanks again!
Scott
There should not be any reason to hate linux but admire it for being able to install remotely. Not sure if MS can do that.
-- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
Have you though about doing a serial port connection form another box (we'll call it server1) that is up and running , via null modem cable, and redirecting the box to be installed (we'll call it server2) output to server1 via the null modem cable? Below are a few links that might get you started. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/index.html http://www.cpqlinux.com/serialinstall.html http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~dranch/LINUX/TrinityOS/cHTML/TrinityOS-c-55.ht... http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2002-July/007641.html John
On 5/28/05, John Scott <praiserock@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/25/05, Ken Schneider <suse-list@bout-tyme.net> wrote:
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 18:20 -0700, Scott Leighton wrote:
Thanks to Ken, Stephen and Jerry for the useful pointers.
I'm probably worrying needlessly here and the install will go fine using VNC. The only humans on the other side will be IT guys that are 100% windows oriented, but I should be able to get them to mount the DVD and type the neccessary commands to get me going with a VNC install.
I was hoping not to have to involve them, don't want to give them any reasons to dislike Linux and certainly don't want my incompetence on display if there are problems with the install <g>.
It's a few months away, but I'll report back on my success or failure.
Thanks again!
Scott
There should not be any reason to hate linux but admire it for being able to install remotely. Not sure if MS can do that.
-- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
Have you though about doing a serial port connection form another box (we'll call it server1) that is up and running , via null modem cable, and redirecting the box to be installed (we'll call it server2) output to server1 via the null modem cable?
Below are a few links that might get you started.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/index.html http://www.cpqlinux.com/serialinstall.html http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~dranch/LINUX/TrinityOS/cHTML/TrinityOS-c-55.ht... http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2002-July/007641.html
John
I forgot to state that you could then ssh to server1 and control server2 over the null modem connection. In effect server1 has become a cheap console server. This still requires some human interaction at the other end. Someone will need to either type in some commands or you'll need to create a custom boot disk with the correct arguments that this person boots the server from. Not quite the same as getting true bios level control, but it will let you install. John
participants (4)
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John Scott -
Ken Schneider -
Scott Leighton -
Stephen Carter