Re: [suse-autoinstall] Antwort: Re: [suse-autoinstall] Boot HddImage

22 May 2003

      Hi Alexander,

I have been trying very hard (during the last few months) to apply the 
methodology, that you describe, with SuSE Linux (load the ISO images or 
CD contents onto a hard disk drive partition - "vfat" or "ext2" - and 
install from this partition, instead of from the CDROM drive), only to 
find out (to my great disappointment...) that SuSE Linux simply does NOT 
do it.

Every other distribution, that I tried this with, works O.K. (Mandrake, 
Slackware, Debian and Red Hat, which I am currently using).

This is the reason that I had to switch to Red Hat (after several years 
of using SuSE Linux - since Version 6.2).

Alexander.Gehrig@RSD.rohde-schwarz.com wrote:
...
hi
Thanks for answer...
We will build the image by using ghost ( support for ext2fs ). So we are able to
recreate the image on the most partitions.
The networkboot is not possible because we have many different systems with
different hardware on different locations. The lastes systems supports
booting form network, but we have many older systems, that do not support this
function. So we have to create a possibillity to initialize a autoinstall
without this hardware. At the moment we need 3 disks to start the autoinstall
and 1 disk to prepare the computer for installing operatingsystems.Linux will be
the second os beside a windows os.
Our preparedisk creates all needed partitions, so autoyast only format the
partions, that was marked for linux.
Do you know a possibillity to copy a Image of SuSE CD1 on a harddisk image and
boot from it?
Do you know any possiblity to build a very small suse installation instead of
the first?
Installation:
1. prepare hdd
2. copy linux image to partition ( the parttition is >4GB )
3. boot from this linux
4. start autoinstall ( Installserver NFS )
The autoinstall should format the partions with small linux.
Any ideas?
Any discriptions?
thanks!
bye
Alexander
|--------+----------------------->
|        |          Thomas Mack  |
|        |              |
|        |                       |
|        |          22.05.2003   |
|        |          09:53        |
|        |                       |
|--------+----------------------->
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  |                                                                            |
  |       An:     Alexander Gehrig/RSD@RSD                                     |
  |       Kopie:                                                               |
  |       Thema:  Re: [suse-autoinstall] Boot HddImage                         |
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...
Hi All,
I want to create a diskless installation for our os installroutine.
Normally, you would use network booting for this - it works without
problems...
...
How can i create a small basic linux installation on a partition so i am able
to
...
clone this partition.
When you do this, your hardware will have to be very much identical on
every machine. You could try to create this small installation with
dhcp network (so you don't have different network settings on every
machine) and automatic startup of autoinstallation after boot.
SuSE might not be the ideal system for this, as you will need rather
much space even for a minimal installation I think.
...
After this on each System i want to install i copy this image on a ready
prepartitioned hdd.
Don't know, if dd will help here, but you could give it a try. There are
tools for creating (and restoring) disk images, don't really know, what
the name was for the free gnu tool, something like gnupart. Norton ghost
can do this as well, and there are many more. The gnu tool should be
sufficient.
...
Now i am able to boot from this partition an load all needed modules and start
the autoinstall.
Don't really understand, why you don't autoinstall right from the
beginning. You need boot proms on the network cards of each PC, and the
mainboard needs support for booting from the network. You can normally
resolve the first problem by buying boot proms if not yet installed
(we payed about 6,- Euro each), but if the mainboards do not support
booting from the network, then... :(
Success,
Thomas Mack
TU Braunschweig, Abt. Informationssysteme
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