[Tech] Partimus (PXE?) (nearly?) unattended install solution(s?)

Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu
Wed Jun 17 21:20:27 PDT 2015


Tai,

Well,

regarding:
http://lists.partimus.org/pipermail/tech-partimus.org/2015q2/000248.html
http://lists.partimus.org/pipermail/tech-partimus.org/2015q2/000247.html

If you're able to set up PXE boot/install server with CentOS,
and client boots/installs okay from that,
but you're having problems getting that to work with Ubuntu (or Lubuntu)
as the PXE/install server, I'd say the issue is almost certainly with
the server.

Though not for Ubuntu/Lubuntu, though rather similar, Debian has an
excellent Wiki on setting such up for Debian:
https://wiki.debian.org/PXEBootInstall
One may want to essentially follow that, making the suitable changes as
relevant along the way for Ubuntu/Lubuntu - but ought otherwise work
quite similarly.

If you're doing the client on VirtualBox, did you remember to make the
appropriate settings on the client?  Remember issue we bumped into
earlier, and which I solved (repeating someone else's earlier solution
from what they managed to document):
http://lists.partimus.org/pipermail/tech-partimus.org/2015q1/000178.html
That was the only issue I'd bumped into that was unique to VirtualBox.

Since the target clients are to be Lubuntu (rather than Ubuntu), I
thought it much more appropriate, especially since the build/install
server is to also be caching server, that it too ought be Lubuntu,
rather than Ubuntu, and also that it ought be i386, and not
amd64/x86_64.  And that's what I did earlier - set up working Lubuntu
PXE boot/install server, and noted all the non-default bits I went
through, setting up both server, and client, and other relevant bits
along the way.  About the only difference being I did it under qemu-kvm
rather than VirtualBox.  But aside from that one specific
aforementioned VirtualBox specific issue, once that is effectively
dealt with (as we (re)discovered solution for that), ought work quite
the same as with qemu-kvm ... just have to do more ewey GUI clicky
clicky stuff to set it up and run through many of the steps - but
otherwise quite the same.  Anyway, I earlier wrote up the bits of my
going through that:
http://lists.partimus.org/pipermail/tech-partimus.org/2015q2/000189.html
Hopefully that's enough to get you fairly far along the process?  That
Debian wiki should also be quite useful, as not only does it show how
to set it up, but also pretty much shows how to test along the way that
one has successfully completed each of the major prerequisite steps
needed.
Though I could set up CentOS to replicate what you've done, I don't
particularly see point to that, as Partimus PXE server ought be Lubuntu,
and I've already successfully set up both Debian and Lubuntu PXE
boot/install servers.
If need be, one can even use tcpdump on the communication that should be
present between client and server to see what's missing or going wrong -
should be able to see the bootp/DHCP/PXE/tftp traffic quite easily
enough.  If nothing else, that should generally suffice to isolate where
things are going wrong between client and server - regardless of what
flavor, distribution, or even operating system type, is used by client
and server.

Anyway, hope that all helps.  If you still aren't able to get client to
successfully PXE boot and install from server, please provide the
details on where it's failing, what's been checked, how, and what
(non-default) steps have been done for setting up network, server, and
client.



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