Network Installation of openSUSE

This will be my main blog entry discussing the best practices (mine anyway) on setting up a network installation server.

What is the Motivation for this setup?

1) Local Area Networks (LANs) are ubiquitous... even in homes where, chances are, you have a modem to the Internet and next to it is a wireless/ethernet router for multiple wifi and ethernet capable devices (PCs, Laptops, Smartphones, Tablets etc) to connect and surf the web.

2) If you are a Linux/OSS enthusiast, you would be constantly downloading the latest ISOs from the web, burning them onto a DVDs and installing them on physical/virtual machines. This is time/resource intensive... time to download, time to burn a DVD, time/money spent on blank DVDs etc. Of course, if you install openSUSE on virtual machines, you avoid the DVD part of the process but you would still have lots of ISOs on your filesystem... if you have a classroom of 20 machines... well, you get the idea.

3) Almost all PCs and Laptops these days have an ethernet port and are capable of booting up from the network (ie PXE-boot). This means you physically power them on, tell it to go into PXE-boot mode and it will go onto the network and seek out an installation server to download and install the openSUSE binaries.

4) This is an efficient way to install openSUSE onto both physical and virtual machines in a LAN environment where there is only one central place for your software binaries.

Pre-requisites:

i) You have a LAN environment connecting a few machines via the network cable. Although booting from wifi is possible but it is out of the scope of this discussion.

ii) You have a physical machine (preferably*) with openSUSE installed and this will be the designated network installation server.
*It is possible to set this up on a virtual machine but you need to ensure it is connected to the physical LAN in a Bridge networking mode and not the usual NAT networking mode for typical virtual machines.

3 Simple^ Steps to Success:
^Simple - it will become more simple as you do this more frequently.

Step 1: Install and configure Apache2 webserver to host and distribute openSUSE binaries.
Please refer to my other blog entry on this subject - Using Apache2 to deploy & maintain SUSE

Step 2: Install and configure tftpboot server to enable initial boot of target machines over the network.
Please refer to my other blog entry on this subject - Install and configure TFTP server for PXE boot environment

Step 3: Install and configure dhcpd server to provide an IP address for target machines and redirect them to the tftpboot server.
Please refer to my other blog entry on this subject - Install and configure DHCP server

Step 4: On the target physical machines, on boot and depending on the BIOS, activate the boot from LAN option and watch it get an IP address from the Installation Server (via Step 3), followed by connecting to the TFTP server and presenting an installation menu (via Step 2). Enter the choice of OS to install and your installation will commence over the LAN (via Step 1).

Additional points of note:

a) Everything discussed here applies to SLES, SLED and openSUSE. The steps documented are based on openSUSE 11.x and should work on older versions and even the enterprise editions of SUSE.

b) Software installation (apache2, tftpboot, syslinux, dhcpd etc) assumes your SLE or openSUSE server have access to their respective binaries, either in DVD (also ISO) or software repository on the web.

References:

• openSUSE.org - SDB:PXE boot installation


• Novell Cool Solutions - Setting Up a SUSE PXE Installation Server in an Existing NetWare Environment


• Novell Article - Setting up a PXE Boot Server
  

Enjoy!

Install and configure TFTP server for PXE boot environment

This blog entry describes how you would install and configure the TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server for the purpose of building a PXE boot environment. The tftp server would transfer the syslinux binaries to boot up your physical machine. It will also present a text-based menu for the user to select what operating system to install.

Link to main entry on Network Installation of openSUSE.

1) Install SysLinux (Bootloader for Linux)

Command-line (as root): zypper in syslinux


2) Install tftp

Command-line (as root): zypper in tftp yast2-tftp-server


3) Enable tftp

Command-line (as root): yast2 tftp-server



In TFTP Server Configuration dialog, check to Enable the service. Ensure the Boot Image Directory is set to /srv/tftpboot. Finally, check the Open Port in Firewall and click Ok.

Note: Its been observed that the SUSE Firewall may still block incoming traffic to the TFTP boot server despite the Open Port in Firewall setting.



To ensure the Firewall is not blocking incoming TFTP traffic, open the Firewall setting via YaST (or command-line yast2 firewall). Navigate to the Allow Services section (left-hand pane) and click on Advanced button. Ensure that port 69 is listed in the UDP section and click OK to accept. Click Next and complete the settings change.

Next, create the sub-directory /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg via the command-line: mkdir -p /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

4) Populating the /srv/tftpboot directory

Copy pxelinux.0 file (part of syslinux package installed earlier) to the /srv/tftpboot directory. Command-line: cp /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /srv/tftpboot/

Copy the relevant Linux kernel and initrd boot files to /srv/tftpboot and provide meaning names (to avoid confusion later). This is best described by way of an example. Let's say I want to enable my installation server to provide an option to install both the 32-bit and 64-bit of openSUSE 11.4. Therefore, I would do the following:

a) Mount both 32-bit and 64-bit of openSUSE 11.4 ISO on the filesystem:

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop /directory/to/openSUSE-32-bit.iso /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-i586

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop /directory/to/openSUSE-64-bit.iso /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-x86_64/


b) Copy the relevant Linux kernel and initrd files to /srv/tftpboot and rename them with more meaning names:

cp /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-i586/boot/i386/loader/linux /srv/tftpboot/openSUSE-114-32bit.krnl

cp /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-i586/boot/i386/loader/initrd /srv/tftpboot/openSUSE-114-32bit.initrd

cp /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-x86_64/boot/x86_64/loader/linux /srv/tftpboot/openSUSE-114-64bit.krnl

cp /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-x86_64/boot/x86_64/loader/initrd /srv/tftpboot/openSUSE-114-64bit.initrd



c) Copy the message file from any openSUSE ISO to /srv/tftpboot:

cp /mnt/openSUSE-11.4-x86_64/boot/x86_64/loader/message /srv/tftpboot/

*You may unmount the ISOs as these copy are a one-time operation.


5) Prepare the text-based menu

[Update on 3 Dec 2011: added the directory where the file default should reside below]

Create a text-file (via your favourite editor as root), named default in the /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory with the following contents:

default harddisk
display message
prompt 1
timeout 600

# Install openSUSE 11.4 (32-bit)
label openSUSE-114-32
kernel openSUSE-114-32bit.krnl
append initrd=openSUSE-114-32bit.initrd splash=silent vga=0x314 showopts install=http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_SERVER/software/openSUSE-11.4-i586/
# Install openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit)
label openSUSE-114-64
kernel openSUSE-114-64bit.krnl
append initrd=openSUSE-114-64bit.initrd splash=silent vga=0x314 showopts install=http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_SERVER/software/openSUSE-11.4-x86_64/

Everything is self-explanatory above except for the install=http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_SERVER portion. Please refer to my other blog entry on using Apache2 webserver to host and serve up software binaries.

Finally, edit the message file in step 4c earlier to correspond with the example default file entries.

Welcome to openSUSE!

To start the installation, type one of the options below and press .

Available boot options:
openSUSE-114-32 - Installation of 11.4 32bit
openSUSE-114-64 - Installation of 11.4 64bit

Have a lot of fun...


Done.

Install and configure DHCP server

This blog entry describes how you would install and configure the dhcpd (DHCP) server for the purpose of assigning an IP address to machines booting up via the network and pointing these machines to the PXE boot environment.

The PXE boot environment (TFTP server) is documented in another blog entry Install and configure tftp server for PXE boot environment and the main entry discussion on Network Installation of openSUSE.

1) Install DHCP Server (dhcpd)

Command-line (as root): zypper in dhcp-server yast2-dhcp-server



2) Configure DHCP

Make a backup of the dhcpd.conf file to start afresh: mv /etc/dhcpd.conf /etc/dhcpd.org.conf

Create a new dhcpd.conf file, using your favourite text editor as root, from scratch with the following content:

---

option rfc3442-classless-static-routes code 121 = array of unsigned integer 8;
option domain-name "example.org";
option routers 192.168.11.1;
max-lease-time 7200;

ddns-updates off;

ddns-update-style none;

log-facility local7;
default-lease-time 600;

# define rules to identify DHCP Requests from PXE and Etherboot clients.
class "pxe" {
match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient";
}
class "etherboot" {
match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "Etherboot";
}

subnet 192.168.11.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.11.51 192.168.11.60;
default-lease-time 14400;
max-lease-time 172800;
server-name "192.168.11.200";
next-server 192.168.11.200;
filename "pxelinux.0";
# allow members of "pxe";
}

---

Using the sample dhcpd.conf above, you can see that

• My router IP is 192.168.11.1


• DHCP daemon is giving out IP address starting from 192.168.11.51 to 192.168.11.60. You can adjust this setting to provide more IP addresses. The important part is to assign IP addresses outside the range of any other existing DHCP server (either in the router or in another environment where you do not have access to the official DHCP server).


• server-name and next-server points to the IP address of the network installation server (ie pointing back to the openSUSE server that is running DHCP server, TFTP server, Apache2 server with binaries)

Alternatively, if you would like a GUI interface, you may try yast2 dhcp-server. Below are screenshots of the 4 step wizard.










3) Starting and Stopping the DHCP Server

Its best to manually start and stop the DHCP Server as required... as most LANs already have some DHCP service running... doubly so if your machine is portable (ie Laptop), you wouldn't want your Laptop to start dishing out IP addresses on boot.

To start the DHCP server, command-line (as root): rcdhcpd start

To stop the DHCP server, command-line (as root): rcdhcpd stop

12.1 RC1 installfest at SLUGS on 1st Nov 2011

The SUSE Linux User Group Singapore (SLUGS) had an informal installfest of openSUSE 12.1 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) just this week...

although, at the time of writing this entry, RC2 has just been released and it looks like 12.1 will be available on time as indicated by the countdown graphic on the right of this blog page.

Special Thanks to Mike Veltman for the VMWare ESXi environment across his Lab for us to play with 12.1 RC1.

During the installfest, I opted to use VirtualBox on Windows 7 to simultaneously install both openSUSE 11.4 and 12.1 RC1. I wanted to see the differences (if any) between the current stable openSUSE and the new major version change (11 to 12).

Here are the side-by-side installation screenshots between 11.4 and 12.1 RC1:

On boot, you'll see a general darker green versus lighter green theme between 11.4 & 12.1.

By default, KDE is the preferred graphical desktop environment for both 11.4 and 12.1 RC1. I also wanted to give the new Gnome 3.x a try/shot/go. However, I only added the Gnome post-installation. It was described in the list of annoying bugs that the installer would hang if we go into the Software Selection and made some changes. Perhaps, the installer could offer one more option of installing both KDE4 and Gnome3 upfront at this stage (allowing multi-selection)?

Minor change here at partition setup. The 11.x design seems to indicate users have to choose between a partition based or LVM based partitioning scheme. The 12.1 design doesn't give that "choose-between-the-camps" feeling and still provide the partition based scheme by default with also additional options of having a separate partition for user home.

Most notable, of course, is the ability to use Btrfs (pronounced "butter-f-s") as the default filesystem. I have heard alot about it but have yet to fully tried it out. I am sure it will be covered in a much later blog entry.

openSUSE 11.4 and 12.1 RC1 installed, booted up into the default KDE4 graphical desktop environment.

One more minor thing, I bring up YaST-Software Management, select the Patterns view and chose to install both "GNOME Desktop Environment" and "GNOME Base System" pattern (as seen in screenshot above). Click Accept and you will have the opportunity to explore the GNOME 3, in addition to the default KDE4 desktop environment.

To switch between the two, simply log off and at the login screen, choose either GNOME or KDE4 (via the little green stripped button) before providing your user password to login.

Below is a few screenshots of the GNOME3 desktop environment.

Personally, I have not decided which will be my "production" desktop environment. I've been using GNOME for quite a while before switching to KDE4 when 11.x came around and preferred it. With the new major version of GNOME, I am willing to give it a try and decide which is my preferred desktop environment. For now, on my 11.4 systems, my choice is KDE4.