Re: [arch-releng] Archlinux automated via PXE

On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 10:19:57 +0200 Nico Schottelius wrote:

Hey Dieter,

Dieter Plaetinck [Sat, Apr 02, 2011 at 09:43:31AM +0200]:

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On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 01:54:12 +0200 Nico Schottelius wrote:

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Simo Leone [Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 04:40:21PM -0700]:

...

I added a few things to make serial console work over PXE/IPMI recently... so at least you can do manual installs that way.

That's probably another good step into the right direction!

What about logging to a remote tcp/udp port and/or syslog support?

In the end, the killer for using an OS in a large infrastructure is automated installations though, not only logging :-)

Cheers,

Nico

You should be able to do what you want with: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archiso_as_pxe_server and recent images from http://releng.archlinux.org/isos/ where you can pass a script argument to the kernel which will execute any script (like say.. an aif automatic installation)

That's right, but it's pretty cumbersome to retrieve a whole iso image to do that job.

Besides that, in a large infrastructure dhcp/dns is usually already existing and thus the script does way too much.

Indeed, if you'd added the copy_files() part into the release process, people who want to have the pxe installation method could just grep the 4 needed files and would be happy.

That's what other Unices do and in my opinion should be simple to implement once at Archlinux and then have nobody care about it again.

well, I don't have a large infrastructure sitting at home, nor do I have the time to figure out and implement a feature I don't use; I already have a hard enough time doing all the other releng stuff. If you want to make things better, I welcome contributions and will gladly assist you where I can. But this kind of stuff needs to come from someone who actually uses it and can test it. Dieter