On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Mike Smith wrote: > John said: > > On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Mike Smith wrote: > > > > > >> All, > >> > >> I'm new to the list. However I'm not new to kickstart. > >> > >> I'm not too sure why the boot disks were changed away from boot.img and > >> bootnet.img. If you can make me see the light, then cool. But from where I sit, it > >> seems like a bad idea! > > > > Too much stuff for the floppy image. You can (I think) use a CD. > > > > I can't. I maintain a slew of servers around the world. And dealing with not the > most technically advanced people manning a 24/7 center, I opt to make it simple. > They receive an image from me and rawrite. They save them both down and create the > disk. Stick it in and wait for the nice beeps and message at the end. Then they pop > out the disk and reboot. Nice 15 min rebuild of ANY mission critical machines. > > Could you imagine if I had to walk them through how to create a bootable cd and the > likes. Only to find out they were trying to burn to a cd-rom and not a cdr :) > > Seriously. The old way was better. And I've gotten a few comments off the list from > this thread and people don't want this going away. The floppy isn't dead and will > be around for some time. Sorry :) The CD is Red Hat's solution, not mine. All my machines have floppies, not all have CD or net-bootable NICs. > > > A SINGLE disk worked for some (most) cases, but not all, without some of > > the fiddling you've been doing. > > It should still work for those of us that CAN build our custom images. I'm sure a > lot of the problems people had out there probably shouldn't have been attempting to > build a custom disk until they were a little more up on linux. > > > A good alternative is to build a kernel with the driver builtin, not as > > a module. While you're at it, turn it for your specific requirements. > > There's also a better chance you'll get what you want on ne floppy. > > I'd have to disagree on this one too....Static kernels are not the way to get > around this. I mean, what's the point of having modules then??? :) Automation of Modules are good when you don't control the hardware and you want to cope with everything. When you do control everything, and keep the hardware variety down, then I don't see that modules provide any advantage at all. Using a modules-free install kernel has no implications for using modules later. > building a static kernel based on info in a MySQL database would be a night mare. Why would you do that? > However building a custom ks.cfg based on the info you pull isn't so bad :) > > > I'm past caring: I've moved most of my stuff to Debian and don't expect > > to be doing more RHL installs. Debian's also given me new freedom in > > hardware choice: runs on pretty much any hardware I can find. > > I may look in to that....Thanks for the info. I assume they have a network build > option as well?? The Debian installer is pretty woeful. There's a new one if development, but its first incarnation will not have a GUI. It also has its Fully Automated Installer. THere is also systemimage http://www.systemimager.org/ which can clone just about anything. I like the Debian installer so well I wrote my own;-) It takes a "Ask no questions, take no prisoners" approach. ABout ten minutes after booting my Pentium test system from floppy, it has a useful server install on it. It's just a bunch of shell scripts, and the basic outline is: Mount installer via nfs (possible problem for you) fdisk <<ZZ /dev/hda fdisk partitioning commands ZZ format_partitions make_filesystems untar_base_filesystem basic_setup # At this time we have a genetic system, good for little personalise final_setup reboot # Doesn't actually reboot, switches to running the installed # system. The same approach could be applied to Red Hat. The installer should work equally well, with little change, on S/390, Suns, Apples pSeries, iSeries.... I get the kernel image using tftp which is what the etherboot bootrom does. I use a standard 2.4 kernel (and it doesn't even have to be a kernel for the installed distro), but any kernel, even 2.0, that understands your hardware will do, Options for running the installer include 1. From RAM disk, if you have enough RAM 2. From your swap partition if you plan to have one. The installer doesn't need one (unless your're seriously short of RAM), and you could change it's type and initialise it on first real reboot. 3. Loopback from an image on a FAT (or maybe NTFS) partition. > > > What should solve your difficulties is the Etheroot project. You can put > > bootrom software on floppy and use it ti load a kernel+initrd off the > > network. Doesn't do PXE, but shouldn't be too hard to get working. > > > > See http://www.etherboot.org/ http://rom-o-matic.net/ > > http://www.thinguin.org/ > > Thanks for the info. I'll take a look. > > - Mike > > > _______________________________________________ > Kickstart-list mailing list > Kickstart-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list > -- Please, reply only to the list. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb
