SystemImager® v3.0.1 Manual Brian Elliott Finley dann frazier Austin Gonyou Ari Jort Jason R. Mastaler Greg Pratt Ben Spade Denise Walters Curtis Zinzilieta SystemImager® v3.0.1 Manual by Brian Elliott Finley dann frazier Austin Gonyou Ari Jort Jason R. Mastaler Greg Pratt Ben Spade Denise Walters Curtis Zinzilieta Published $Date: 2003/02/19 05:58:26 $ SystemImager was created by Brian Elliott Finley, who continues to maintain it as the Sys- temImager team lead. Its initial implementation was known as Pterodactyl, which was used for software and password updates to Solaris boxes of varying hardware and OS versions across a nationwide enterprise network. Many SystemImager design decisions were based on per- ceived shortcomings in other automated install tools for systems such as Solaris, RedHat Linux, and Windows. Eventually, SystemImager evolved into the Linux-specific autoinstall and soft- ware distribution tool that it is today. Be sure to view the CREDITS file for a listing of other people who have contributed code or documentation that has been incorporated into SystemImager. Many thanks go to these peo- ple, as their relentless pursuit in the discovery bugs and the occasional code contribution are invaluable. Trademark Notices SystemImager® is a registered trademark of Brian Finley. Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Debian® is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. Red Hat® is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Solaris® is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Table of Contents 1. Introduction to SystemImager®......................................................................................1 SystemImager Overview.............................................................................................1 Who Should Use This Guide ......................................................................................2 How SystemImager Works .........................................................................................3 Supported Distributions ....................................................................................3 System Requirements.........................................................................................3 Glossary of Terms.........................................................................................................4 2. Installing SystemImager .................................................................................................7 How Does it Work? ......................................................................................................7 Obtaining SystemImager ............................................................................................7 Selecting A Machine To Use As An Image Server...................................................7 Installing an Image Server ..........................................................................................7 Selecting A Machine To Use As A Golden Client....................................................8 Installing SystemImager Client Software on a Golden Client...............................8 Creating an Image on the Golden Client ..................................................................9 Upgrading SystemImager...........................................................................................9 Regenerating autoinstallscripts ........................................................................9 Customizations to /etc/systemimager/rsyncd.conf ..................................10 Regenerating boot media.................................................................................10 What happened to the binary tarballs? .........................................................10 3. Using SystemImager ......................................................................................................13 Installation Procedures Overview ...........................................................................13 Detailed Installation Instructions ...................................................................13 SystemImager Tools .........................................................................................18 4. SystemImager Background...........................................................................................23 Design Goals ...............................................................................................................23 Development of SystemImager Architecture.........................................................23 5. Frequently Asked Questions........................................................................................25 6. Troubleshooting ..............................................................................................................39 What’s with the "ETHER_SLEEP" variable, and when should I mess with it?.39 getimage fails with a "Failed to retrieve /etc/systemimager/mounted_filesystems from <golden client>" message. .............................................................................................................39 My client fails to assign a hostname to itself, causing the autoinstall to fail.....39 My client autoinstallation/update hangs, crashes, or is ridiculously slow.......40 My autoinstallcd doesn’t boot..................................................................................41 When making the autoinstalldiskette, my system gives me an error involving "dd" or "mount".................................................................................................41 My client failed to autoinstall, and when I run an rsync command on it manually, it takes forever for the image server to respond. .......................41 My autoinstall client booted up and said "dhcp didn’t work," but when I do an ifconfig eth0 it has an IP address....................................................................41 My client fails with the error: "chroot: cannot execute systemconfigurator: No such file or directory" My autoinstall client booted up and said "dhcp didn’t work," but when I do an ifconfig eth0 it has an IP address. .................................................................................42 My client completes the autoinstall process successfully, but I get an "Invalid Partition Table" error upon reboot, and Linux never boots........................42 PXE installations work fine for a while, but eventually clients no longer boot the autoinstall kernel........................................................................................43 My autoinstallclient fails with "Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs"...43 iii 7. Developing SystemImager®..........................................................................................45 Version Strings............................................................................................................45 Using CVS ...................................................................................................................45 Submitting Patches.....................................................................................................45 Tour of the Source Tree ..............................................................................................46 Makefile Overview ...........................................................................................46 Third Party Software........................................................................................46 Boel .....................................................................................................................46 Boel Libraries.....................................................................................................46 8. Command Reference......................................................................................................49 ADDCLIENTS ............................................................................................................49 AUTOINSTALLSCRIPT.CONF................................................................................51 CPIMAGE....................................................................................................................53 GETIMAGE.................................................................................................................55 LSIMAGE ....................................................................................................................57 MKAUTOINSTALLCD .............................................................................................58 MKAUTOINSTALLDISKETTE ................................................................................59 MKAUTOINSTALLSCRIPT......................................................................................61 MKBOOTSERVER......................................................................................................63 MKDHCPSERVER .....................................................................................................64 MKDHCPSTATIC.......................................................................................................65 MVIMAGE ..................................................................................................................66 PREPARECLIENT ......................................................................................................67 RMIMAGE...................................................................................................................69 MKRSYNCD_CONF..................................................................................................70