From: James Knott
It's a new system. No OS. I'm trying to install it from the opensuse DVD using a serial console.I can't even get past the boot loader screen of the DVD.
Is that even possible? I've certainly never heard of it.
I install all my boxes via serial console. What I do may not help you much though because I do other stuff that you may not want to do or be able to arrange. Mainly I install from a neighboring http source not a dvd in the tray, and only use serial for navigating the bios and bootloader, I use ssh after that. What I do is take the kernel (linux) and initrd from the mini.iso, and a customized syslinux.cfg that started out as just a copy of isolinux.cfg from the mini.iso Put them on a usb thumb drive and make it bootable with syslinux (windows or linux version, doesn't matter, I actually just include a copy of windows syslinux.exe right on the usb stick, so the stick contains everything necessary to make more sticks. It's way more convenient than burning cd's, once a stick is bootable you never need to run syslinux on it again, from then on you can just edit the config and text files at will, load different kernels and initrd's etc.. pop it in any desktop, edit the config a little, boot from it, so nice... syslinux.cfg looks like this note serial must actually be the top line order doesn't matter for the rest until the label sections note the append lines will probably wrap in email every label section is exactly 3 lines: label, kernel, append ---snip--- serial 0 115200 0x013 console 0 default ssh timeout 300 prompt 1 display main.txt f1 main.txt f2 notes.txt f3 syslinux.cfg label ssh kernel linux append showopts initrd=initrd install="http://somehost.com/SUSE/10.3/oss" ssh=1 sshpassword=opensuse console=ttyS0,115200n8 label vnc kernel linux append showopts initrd=initrd install="http://somehost.com/SUSE/10.3/oss" vnc=1 vncpassword=opensuse label install kernel linux append showopts initrd=initrd install="http://somehost.com/SUSE/10.3/oss" console=ttyS0,115200n8 ---snip--- Actually I have other labels that define preconfigured netdevice/hostip/gateway/nameserver and some more that load preconfigured autoyast files and I'm usually using one of those. Like so: label auto_wan_or2 kernel linux append showopts initrd=initrd install="http://somehost.com/SUSE/10.3/oss" autoyast="http://somehost.com/autoyast/or2.xml" netdevice=eth0 hostip=111.222.333.4/24 gateway=111.222.333.1 nameserver=111.222.333.2 ssh=1 sshpassword=opensuse console=ttyS0,115200n8 ...and usually I'm using one of those via a combination of serial console & ssh. That is, serial console to boot and navigate the syslinux boot loader, then ssh for the rest. Otherwise I just use the ssh label above, which will attempt to do dhcp on all nics. Either way dhcp or preconfigured, after booting and loading the install environment it then displays the ip address it's using on the console (the serial console) as the last thing before starting sshd, so you'll know what ip to ssh to even if it wasn't a preconfigured one. I do the serial parts remotely via serial console server, or by telling the on site person to boot the stick and choose ssh. The ssh option is just great for this for several reasons. A) terminal emulation is far easier, it's just "linux" and a linux terminal emulator (putty works fine with a few options set correctly). At the serial consol, your terminal must be configured to satisfy at least 4 different things and it's hard to find any single set of emulation options that satisfies all of: a1) your motherboards bios (which may only understand something it calls "vt100" or "ansi" but doesn't do either accurately, neither of which is even a very meaningful term anyways because there ar many variants that all call themselves "ansi". Then after dealing with the bios, the same terminal must also satisfy the boot loader. a2) Syslinux, used during install/repair, doesn't even say what kind of terminal it expects a3) Grub, used after install, at least says "vt100" a4) The OS linux (same for both installer and post install) So, generally, an emulator in linux or xterm mode, which would be best for the installer and of course post-install, won't work very well in the motherboard bios or at the boot loader, so you need something vt100-like for that, and whatever combination of options it takes to make a terminal that works well with your motherboard bios, the installer environment will likely not contain any termcap/terminfo entries that exactly match that particulr terminal. So, use serial to boot, but use ssh for the rest. B) ssh allows you to log in multiple times and start as many shells as you like. It's REAL handy to be able to get started then get in on another session to do smething like fiddle with a raid array or edit /etc/hosts to temporarily force the install downloads to use the local gigabit lan ip of the install server, because you can't exit yast once you start it. Exiting yast immediately reboots the box. ssh also is the only option that allows you to access the system and do things to it before starting yast, like manually configuring a raid setup that the interactive installer can't create but could use if it already existed (raid10). (I say "interactive" because, the raid10 module is included in the installer initrd, and, if you manually edit an autoinst.xml file and just change raid0/1/5 to raid10, it actually will format completely blank drives into partitions and raid10 sweet as you please.) C) ssh gives a far faster and more perfect terminal than serial. Even at 115200 with hardware flow control and short perfect cables, a serial connection is still slow and somewhat glitchy. It's easy to cause your terminal emulator or the app on the server to lock up or do something else undesired due to missed characters or interrupted escape sequences etc.. I beleive if you simply omit the install= from the labels above, and put the dvd in the drive, and boot from the usb stick (usually requires manual intervention in the bios to prefer usb over dvd in the boot order), then I think it will search for a dvd by default even though you didn't boot from the dvd or tell it explicitly where the dvd was. If you want to do the whole install via serial instead of ssh, just use the "install" label. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org