[arch-releng] Archlinux automated via PXE

[Nico Schottelius]

Hey Dieter,

Dieter Plaetinck [Sat, Apr 02, 2011 at 09:43:31AM +0200]:
> On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 01:54:12 +0200
> Nico Schottelius <nico-archlinux-releng at schottelius.org> wrote:
> 
> > 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.

Cheers,

Nico

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