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Before booting for the first time, you have to choose which medium you use for booting. You can use the boot floppy or configure the computer to boot via network card using a boot PROM, which is much smarter.
If you have a 3Com network card that is equipped with a boot ROM by Lanworks Technologies or already includes the DynamicAccess Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA) software[5], you can enter the MBA setup by typing Ctrl+Alt+B during boot. The setup should look like this:
Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA) v4.00 (C) Copyright 1999 Lanworks Technologies Co. a subsidiary of 3Com Corporation All rights reserved. =============================================================================== Configuration Boot Method: PXE Default Boot: Network Local Boot: Enabled Config Message: Enabled Message Timeout: 3 Seconds Boot Failure Prompt: Wait for timeout =============================================================================== Use cursor keys to edit: Up/Down change field, Left/Right change value ESC to quit, F9 restore previous settings, F10 to save
Set the boot method to PXE and enable local boot in this menu. So
the first boot device will be the network card using PXE, and the second should
be the local hard disk. This has to be configured in the BIOS of your
computer. If you like to use the BOOTP protocol choose TCP/IP and
set the protocol to BOOTP. When using BOOTP, you have to make a
symbolic link from the hostname of your client to the appropriate kernel image
in /srv/tftp/fai
. You can also use the utility tlink
(/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/utils/tlink
) to create this link.
The file installimage_3com
is created by imggen
and
is suitable for booting 3Com network cards[6].
Most modern bootable network cards support the PXE boot environment. Some
network cards (e.g. Intel EtherExpress PRO 100) have a fixed boot
configuration, so they can only use the PXE boot protocol. This requires a PXE
Linux boot loader and a special version of the TFTP daemon, which
is available in the Debian package tftpd-hpa
. First install
following additional needed packages:
# apt-get install dhcp3-server syslinux tftpd-hpa
Then set up the DHCP daemon. A sample configuration file can be found in
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/dhcpd.conf
. Copy this file to
/etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf
. Then enable the special tftp daemon using
this line in file /etc/inetd.conf
:
tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/in.tftpd in.tftpd -s /srv/tftp/fai
The install client then loads the pxelinux boot loader which receives its
configuration via TFTP from a file in the directory
/srv/tftp/pxelinux.cfg
. Using the command
fai-chboot(8)
you can define which kernel will be loaded by the
PXE Linux loader and which additional parameters are passed to this kernel.
You should read the manual pages, which give you some good examples. See
/usr/share/doc/syslinux/pxelinux.doc
for more information about
how to boot such an environment. The PXE environment uses the original kernel
image (not the netboot image made by mknbi-linux) which is copied to
/srv/tftp/fai/vmlinuz-install
.
If your network card can't boot by itself, you have two options. The first is
to create a small boot floppy that uses etherboot, so you can use DHCP and TFTP
to get the install kernel that was created with mknbi-linux(8)
. A
lot of ethernet cards support booting via ethernet if a special boot EPROM is
inserted or booted from floppy rom-o-matic.net/
. In depth
documentation about booting via ethernet may be found at
etherboot.sourceforge.net
. The second option is to boot via
floppy disk that is created with the command
make-fai-bootfloppy(8)
. Since there's no client specific
information on this floppy, it's suitable for all your install clients. You
can also specify additional kernel parameters for this boot floppy or set other
variables, if desired. Do not enable BOOTP support when you have a DHCP server
running in your network and vice versa. This could lead to missing
information. There's also a manual page for
make-fai-bootfloppy(8)
. If you have no BOOTP or DHCP server,
supply the network configuration as kernel parameters. The format is
ip=<client-ip>:<server-ip>:<gw-ip>:<netmask>:<hostname>:<device>:<autoconf> for setting up the network and nfsroot=[<server-ip>:]<root-dir>[,<nfs-options>] for specifying the nfsroot (which is required as the default path is not suitable for FAI.)
For additional information see
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/nfsroot.txt
in the kernel sources.
It's possible to perform an automatic installation from CD-ROM without an
install server. The CD-ROM contains all data needed for the installation. The
command fai-cd(8)
puts the nfsroot, the configuration space and a
subset of the Debian mirror onto a CD-ROM. The partitial mirror is created
using the command fai-mirror(1)
which contains all packages that
are used by the classes used in your configuration space. A sample ISO image
is available at www.informatik.uni-koeln.de
/fai/fai-cd/
.
Now it's time to boot your install clients for the first time. They will fail to boot completely, because no BOOTP or DHCP daemon is running yet or recognizes the hosts. But you can use this first boot attempt to easily collect all Ethernet addresses of the network cards.
You have to collect all Ethernet (MAC) addresses of the install clients and assign a hostname and IP address to each client. To collect all MAC addresses, now boot all your install clients. While the install clients are booting, they send broadcast packets to the LAN. You can log the MAC addresses of these hosts by running the following command simultaneously on the server:
# tcpdump -qte broadcast and port bootpc >/tmp/mac.list
After the hosts have been sent some broadcast packets (they will fail to boot
because bootpd
isn't running or does not recognize the MAC address
yet) abort tcpdump
by typing ctrl-c. You get a list
of all unique MAC addresses with these commands:
# perl -ane 'print "\U$F[0]\n"' /tmp/mac.lis|sort|uniq
After that, you only have to assign these MAC addresses to hostnames and IP
addresses (/etc/ethers
and /etc/hosts
or
corresponding NIS maps). With this information you can configure your
BOOTP
or DHCP
daemon (see the section Configuration of the BOOTP daemon, Section 3.6). I
recommend to write the MAC addresses (last three bytes will suffice if you have
network cards from the same vendor) and the hostname in the front of each
chassis.
You should only use this method if you can't use a DHCP server, since it's
easier to create and manage the configuration for DHCP. An example
configuration for the BOOTP daemon can be found in
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/bootptab
.
# /etc/bootptab example for FAI # replace FAISERVER with the name of your install server .faiglobal:\ :ms=1024:\ :hd=/srv/tftp/fai:\ :hn:bs=auto:\ :rp=/srv/fai/nfsroot: .failocal:\ :tc=.faiglobal:\ :sa=FAISERVER:\ :ts=FAISERVER:\ :sm=255.255.255.0:\ :gw=134.95.9.254:\ :dn=informatik.uni-koeln.de:\ :ds=134.95.9.136,134.95.100.209,134.95.100.208,134.95.140.208:\ :nt=time.rrz.uni-koeln.de,time2.rrz.uni-koeln.de: # now one entry for each install client demohost:ha=0x00105A240012:bf=demohost:tc=.failocal:T172="verbose sshd createvt debug": ant01:ha=0x00105A000000:bf=ant01:tc=.failocal:T172="sshd":
Insert one line for each install client at the end of this file as done for the hosts demohost and ant01. Replace the string FAISERVER with the name of your install server. If the install server has multiple network cards and host names, use the host name of the network card to which the install clients are connected. Then adjust the other network tags (sm, gw, dn, ds) to your local needs.
Subnet mask
Default gateway / router
Domain name
List of DNS server. The /etc/resolv.conf
file will be created
using this list of DNS servers and the domain name.
List of FAI_FLAGS; e.g. verbose, debug, reboot, createvt, sshd
The tag for time servers (nt) are optional. Tags with prefix
T (starting from T170) are generic tags which are used to transfer
some FAI specific data to the clients[7] The list of FAI_FLAGS can be space or comma
separated. FAI_FLAGS in bootptab
must be separated by
whitespace. If you define FAI_FLAGS as an additional kernel
parameter, the flags must be separated with a comma. If you do not have full
control over the BOOTP or DHCP daemon (because this service is managed by a
central service group) you can also define the variable FAI_ACTION
in the /fai/class/*.var
scripts. When you have created your
bootptab
file, you have to enable the BOOTP daemon once. It's
installed but Debian does not enable it by default. Edit
/etc/inetd.conf
and remove the comment (the hash) in the line
containing #bootps. Then tell inetd
to reload its
configuration.
# /etc/init.d/inetd reload
The BOOTP daemon automatically reloads the configuration file if any changes are made to it. The daemon for DHCP must always be manually restarted after changes to the configuration file are made.
Now it's time to boot all install clients again! FAI can perform several
actions when the client is booting. This action is defined in the variable
FAI_ACTION. Be very careful if you set FAI_ACTION to
install. This can destroy all your data on the install client, indeed
most time it should do this ;-). It's recommended to change this only on a
per-client base in the BOOTP configuration. Do not change it in the section
.failocal in /etc/bootptab
, which is a definition for
all clients.
The BOOTP daemon can also be started in debug mode if it is not enabled in
inetd.conf
:
# bootpd -d7
An example for dhcp.conf(5)
is available in
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc
, which is working with version 3.x
of the DHCP daemon. Start using this example and look at all options used
therein. One issue to bear in mind when configuring your DHCP daemon is that
the daemon needs to supply the nfsroot path to the client because the kernel
uses a path different from /srv/fai/nfsroot
by default. If you
make any changes to the DHCP daemon configuration, you must restart the daemon.
# /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart
Therefore it's recommended to only supply data into this configuration file,
which doesn't change frequently. By default, the DHCP daemon writes its log
files to /var/log/daemon.log
. The command
fai-chboot(8)
is used for creating a per host configuration for
the pxelinux environment.
These are the messages when booting from floppy disk.
GRUB loading stage2.............. < now the grub menu with multiple boot options is displayed > BOOTING 'FAI-BOTH' kernel (fd0)/vmlinuz-2.4.27 root=/dev/nfs ip=both [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0xd8450] Uncompressing Linux... OK, booting the Kernel. Linux version 2.4.27 (root@kueppers) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 . . .
After this, the rest of the boot messages will be equal to those when booting from network card. When booting from network card with PXE you will see:
Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA) v4.00 . . Pre-boot eXecution Environment (PXE) v2.00 . . DHCP MAC ADDR: 00 04 75 74 A2 43 DHCP.../ CLIENT IP: 192.168.1.12 MASK: 255.255.255.0 DHCP IP: 192.168.1.250 GATEWAY IP: 192.168.1.254 PXELINUX 2.11 (Debian, 2004-09-19) Copyright (C) 1994-2004 H. Peter Anvin UNDI data segment at: 0009D740 UNDI data segment size: 3284 UNDI code segment at: 00090000 UNDI code segment size: 24C0 PXE entry point found (we hope) at 9D74:00F6 My Ip address seems to be C0A801C0 192.168.1.12 ip=192.168.1.12:192.168.1.250:192.168.1.254:255.255.255.0 TFTP prefix: Trying to load pxelinnux.cfg/00-04-75-74-A2-43 Trying to load pxelinnux.cfg/C0A801C0 Loading vmlinuz-install.....................Ready. Uncompressing Linux... OK, booting the Kernel. Linux version 2.4.27 (lange@dom) (gcc version 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-8)) . . . Sending DHCP requests ., OK IP-Config: Got DHCP answer from 192.168.1.250, my address is 192.168.1.12 IP-Config: Complete: device=eth0, addr=192.168.1.12, mask=255.255.255.0, gw=192.168.1.254, host=demohost, domain=localdomain, nis-domain=(none), bootserver=192.168.1.250, rootserver=192.168.1.250, rootpath=/srv/fai/nfsroot,rw,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,acregmin=1800,acregmax=1800,acdirmin=1800,acdirmax=1800 Looking up port of RPC 1000003/2 on 192.168.1.250 Looking up port of RPC 1000005/1 on 192.168.1.250 VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem). . . ----------------------------------------------------- Fully Automatic Installation for Debian GNU/Linux FAI 2.10.1, 20 april 2006 Copyright (c) 1999-2005 Thomas Lange <lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de> ----------------------------------------------------- Calling task_confdir Kernel parameters: ip=dhcp devfs=nomount FAI_ACTION=install root=/dev/nfs FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt,syslogd BOOT_IMAGE=vmlinuz-install Reading /tmp/fai/boot.log Configuration space /fai mounted from faiserver:/srv/fai/config Can't connect daemon on faiserver. Monitoring disabled. Calling task_setup FAI_FLAGS: verbose sshd createvt syslogd Press ctrl-c to interrupt FAI and to get a shell Calling task_defclass /usr/bin/fai-class: Defining classes. Executing /fai/class/10-base-classes. 10-base-classes OK. Executing /fai/class/20-hwdetect.source. loading kernel module rtc . . List of all classes: DEFAULT LINUX I386 FAIBASE GRUB DHCPC DEMO demohost LAST Calling task_defvar Executing FAIBASE.var Loading keymap(s) us-latin1 ...done. Calling task_action FAI_ACTION: install Performing FAI installation. All data may be overwritten! . . Calling task_configure Executing shell: FAIBASE/10-misc FAIBASE/10-misc OK. Executing shell: FAIBASE/20-save_diskvar FAIBASE/20-save_diskvar OK. Executing shell: FAIBASE/30-interface . . Sun Apr 10 01:03:10 CEST 2005 The installation took 480 seconds. Calling task_chboot Calling hook: savelog.LAST Congratulations! No errors found in log files. savelog.LAST OK. Calling task_savelog Calling task_faiend Press <RETURN> to reboot or ctrl-c to execute a shell
When the copyright message of FAI is shown, the install client has mounted the
nfsroot[8] to the clients' root
directory /
. This is the whole filesystem for the client at this
moment. After task_confdir is executed, the configuration space
is mounted or received from a CVS repository. Before the installation is
started (FAI_ACTION=install) the computer beeps three times. So, be
watchful when you hear three beeps but you do not want to perform an
installation!
This is the error message you will see, when your network card is working, but the install server does not export the configuration space directory to the install clients, mostly a problem of missing permissions on the server side.
Root-NFS: Server returned error -13 while mounting /srv/fai/nfsroot VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NFS, trying floppy. VFS: Cannot open root device "nfs" or 02:00 Kernel panic: VFS Unable to mount root fs on 02:00
Use the following command to see which directories are exported from the install server (named kueppers):
showmount -e kueppers
The following error message indicates that your install client doesn't get an
answer from a DHCP server. Check your cables or start the
dhcpd(8)
daemon with the debug flag enabled.
PXE-E51: No DHCP or BOOTP offers received Network boot aborted
These are the messages when you are using the BOOTP method and no BOOTP server replies.
Sending BOOTP requests ........ timed out! IP-Config: Retrying forever (NFS root)...
If you get the following error message, the install kernel has no driver compiled in for your network card.
IP-Config: No network devices available Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 > Root-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up. VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NFS, trying floppy. VFS: Insert root floppy and press ENTER
Then you have to compile the driver for your network card into a new kernel.
This driver must not be a kernel module. The README file of the package
fai-kernels /usr/share/doc/fai-kernels/README
describes how to
compile custom fai kernels. After that, adjust the variable
KERNELPACKAGE in /etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
and
rebuild the nfsroot with the command make-fai-nfsroot(8)
. After
that, you have to create a new boot floppy if you need it. Now your network
card should be recognized and the install kernel should mount the nfsroot
successfully.
Now the clients have booted with FAI_ACTION set to sysinfo.
Type ctrl-c to get a shell or use Alt-F2 or
Alt-F3 and you will get another console terminal, if you have
added createvt to FAI_FLAGS. Remote login is available
via the secure shell if sshd is added to FAI_FLAGS.
The encrypted password is set with the variable FAI_ROOTPW in
/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
and defaults to "fai".
You can create the encrypted password using mkpasswd(1)
and use
the crypt(3)
or md5 algorithm. This is only the root password
during the installation process, not for the new installed system. You can
also log in without a password when using SSH_IDENTITY. To log in
from your server to the install client (named demohost in this example) use:
> ssh root@demohost Warning: Permanently added 'demohost,134.95.9.200' to the list of known hosts. root@demohost's password:
You now have a running Linux system on the install client without using the
local hard disk. Use this as a rescue system if your local disk is damaged or
the computer can't boot properly from hard disk. You will get a shell and you
can execute various commands (dmesg
, lsmod
,
df
, lspci
, ...). Look at the log file in
/tmp/fai
. There you can find much information about the boot
process. All log files from /tmp/fai
are also written to the
$LOGSERVER (if not defined: the install server) into the directory
~fai/demohost/sysinfo/[9]
A very nice feature is that FAI mounts all filesystems it finds on the local
disks read only. It also tells you on which partition a file
/etc/fstab
exists. When only one filesystem table is found, the
partitions are mounted according to this information. Here's an example:
demohost:~# df Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on rootfs 2064192 1071184 888152 55% / /dev/root 2064192 1071184 888152 55% / shm 63548 76 63472 1% /tmp kueppers:/srv/fai/config 2064192 994480 964856 51% /fai /dev/hda1 54447 9859 41777 19% /tmp/target /dev/hda10 1153576 20 1141992 0% /tmp/target/files/install /dev/hda9 711540 20 711520 0% /tmp/target/home /dev/hda8 303336 13 300191 0% /tmp/target/tmp /dev/hda7 1517948 98252 1342588 7% /tmp/target/usr /dev/hda6 202225 8834 182949 5% /tmp/target/var
This method can be used as a rescue environment! In the future
it will be possible to make backups or restore data to existing filesystems.
If you need a filesystem with read-write access use the rwmount
command:
demohost:~# rwmount /tmp/target/home
If the install client boots with action sysinfo, you can also check if
all information from the BOOTP or DHCP daemons are received correctly. The
received information is written to /tmp/fai/boot.log
. An example
of the result of a DHCP request can be found in The setup routines of the install clients, Section
6.3.
At any time you can reboot the computer using the command
faireboot
, also if logged in from remote. If the installation
hasn't finished, use faireboot -s, so the log files are also
copied to the install server.
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FAI Guide (Fully Automatic Installation)
FAI Guide version 2.5.4, 20 april 2006 for FAI package version 2.10.1lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de