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 Technologie or already includes the DynamicAccess Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA) software[8], you can enter the MBA setup by typing Ctrl+Alt+B during boot. The setup will 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: TCP/IP
Protocol: BOOTP
Default Boot: Network
Local Boot: Enabled
Config Message: Enabled
Message Timeout: 3 Seconds
Boot Failure Prompt: Wait for key
===============================================================================
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 TCP/IP and the protocol to either
BOOTP or DHCP. I prefer BOOTP because the daemon
automaticly reloads its configuration when it's changed. Make a symbolic link
from the hostname of your client to the appropriate kernel image in
/boot/fai. In the following example the host is called
bigfoot. The file installimage_3com is created by
imggen and suitable for booting 3Com network cards.
kueppers[~]# cd /boot/fai
kueppers[~]# ln -s installimage_3com bigfoot
Some network cards (e.g. Intel EtherExpress PRO 100) have a fixed
configuration for booting using the PXE protocol. This requires a PXE Linux
boot loader an a special version of the TFTP daemon. See
/usr/share/doc/syslinux/pxelinux.doc.gz for more information, how
to boot such an environment. There are also some mails in the FAI mailing list
archive concerning this topic. Sometimes you do not need a netboot image for
booting instead you can use the raw kernel image. So, copy the kernel image
from the nfsroot to the TFTP directory:
# cp /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/vmlinuz-2.2.19 /boot/fai/installimage
If your network card can't boot itself, you have to boot via floppy. Use the
command make-fai-bootfloppy to create the boot floppy. 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, if desired. There's more help available.
# make-fai-bootfloppy -h
If you have no BOOTP or DHCP server, supply the network configuration as kernel parameters. [9]
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, if following command is running simultaneously on the server:
# tcpdump -qte broadcast and port bootpc >/tmp/mac.lis
After the hosts has 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 these information you can configure your
BOOTP or DHCP daemon (see the section Configuration of the BOOTP daemon, Section
3.5). 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.
An example configuration for the BOOTP daemon is included in FAI. If you have
no /etc/bootptab file you can use
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/bootptab as template.
# /etc/bootptab example for FAI
# replace FAISERVER with the name of your install server
.faiglobal:\
:ms=1024:\
:hd=/boot/fai:\
:hn:bs=auto:\
:rp=/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot:
# rp: $NFSROOT
# your local values
# sa: your tftp server (install server)
# ts: your timeserver (time enabled in inetd.conf)
# these are optional
# ys: NIS server
# yd: NIS domainname
# nt: list of NTP servers
.failocal:\
:tc=.faiglobal:\
:sa=FAISERVER:\
:ts=FAISERVER:\
:T170="FAISERVER:/usr/local/share/fai":\
:T171="sysinfo":\
: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:\
:ys=rubens:yd=informatik4711.YP:\
:nt=time.rrz.uni-koeln.de,time2.rrz.uni-koeln.de:
# now one entry for each install client
bigfoot:ha=0x00105A240012:bf=bigfoot:tc=.failocal:T171="sysinfo":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 bigfoot 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.
The tags for NIS and time servers (yp, yd, 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. It is important,
that T171 (equivalent to variable FAI_ACTION[10]. is set to sysinfo
! Later you can set it to install, in order to start the
automatic installation. For more information on all tags see
bootptab(5). 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 additional
kernel parameter, the flags must be separated with a comma.
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
I recommend to use the BOOTP daemon and protocol for booting because it
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 [11].
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 carefully 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 modus, 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. Start using this example and
look at all options used therein. If you make any changes to this
configuration, you must restart the daemon.
These are the messages, when booting from floppy.
LILO Loading FAI-BOOTP.
Uncompressing Linux... OK, booting the Kernel.
Linux version 2.2.19 (root@kueppers) (gcc version 2.95.2 20000220
.
.
.
The rest of the boot message will be equal to those when booting from network card. When booting from network card you will see:
BOOTP.
TFTP....
Linux Net Boot Image Loader Version 0.8.1 (netboot)
.
Uncompressing Linux... OK, booting the Kernel.
Linux version 2.2.19 (root@kueppers) (gcc version 2.95.2 20000220
.
.
.
Sending BOOTP requests ..... OK
IP-Config: Got BOOTP answer from 134.95.9.149
IP-Config: Complete:
device=eth0, addr=134.95.9.200, mask=255.255.255.0, gw=134.95.9.254,
host=ant01, domain=informatik.uni-koeln.de, nis-domain=informatik4711.YP,
bootserver=134.95.9.149, rootserver=134.95.9.149, rootpath=/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot
.
.
------------------------------------------------------
FAI 2.2.3, 15 november, 2001
Fully Automatic Installation for Debian GNU/Linux
Copyright (c) 1999-2001, Thomas Lange
lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de
------------------------------------------------------
Calling task_confdir
Kernel parameters:auto rw root=/dev/nfs
Defining variable: root=/dev/nfs
Sending BOOTP request using device eth0
/fai mounted from kueppers:/usr/local/share/fai
Calling task_setup
.
.
Calling task_action
FAI_ACTION: install
Performing FAI installation. All data may be overwritten !
.
.
Press <RETURN> to reboot or ctrl-c to execute a shell
When the copyright message is shown, the install client has mounted the
nfsroot[12] to the clients root
directory /. This is the whole filesystem for the client at this
moment. When /fai is mounted, the configuration data from the
install server is available on the client.
Following error message indicates, that your install client doesn't get an
answer from a BOOTP server. Check your cables or start the
bootpd(8) daemon with the debug flag enabled.
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 a new kernel has a driver compiled in, which supports your network card. This driver must no be a kernel module. To compile the new kernel, start using the default kernel configuration of FAI.
kueppers# cd /usr/src/kernel-source-2.2.19
kueppers# cp /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/boot/config-2.2.19 .config
kueppers# make menuconfig
Call make menuconfig and add the driver in menu Network
device support/Ethernet which supports your network card. Then create a
Debian package using make-kpkg(8):
kueppers# make-kpkg clean
kueppers# make-kpkg --revision BOOTP2 kernel-image
This command creates the file
/usr/src/kernel-image-2.2.19_BOOTP2_i386.deb. Adjust the variable
KERNELPACKAGE in /etc/fai.conf and rebuild the nfsroot.
kueppers# make-fai-nfsroot
After that, you have to create a new boot floppy. Now your network card should
be recognized and the install kernel should mount the nfsroot successfully.
More information how to compile an install kernel can be found in the
README of the package fai-kernels.
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 if added to FAI_FLAGS.
The encrypted password is set with variable FAI_ROOTPW in
/etc/fai.conf and is default to "fai". You can also log
in without a password when using SSH_IDENTITY. To log in from your
server to the install client (for eg. named ant01) use:
> ssh -l root ant01
Warning: Permanently added 'ant01,134.95.9.200' to the list of known hosts.
root@ant01's password:
You have now 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 can
execute various commands (dmesg, lsmod, df, lspci, ...). Look at the log file
in /tmp. There you can find much information about the boot
process. All log files from /tmp are also written to the install
server into the directory ~fai/ant01/sysinfo/[13]
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 file is found, the partitions
are mounted according to this information. Here's an example:
ant01:~# df
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 1249132 855648 330032 72% /
/dev/ram0 3963 36 3927 1% /tmp
kueppers:/usr/local/share/fai
1249132 855648 330032 72% /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 an rescue environment ! In 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:
ant01:~# 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. If the
kernel uses BOOTP requests to receive data, these information will be written
to /tmp/bootp.log. If the kernel support the DHCP protocol all is
written to /tmp/dhcp.log. And example for the result of a BOOTP
requests 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.
lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de