Installing from CD across LAN: not quite there
Bernie
CD; no internet connection is available at the site. After lots of
reading of the Debian and Debian-Installer manuals, installing across
a local network seems possible (sects 2.2.5 & 4.6 of the installation
guide). PXE boot from a TFTP server works ok, starting the basic
linux and initrd.gz. But problems 'seeing' the remainder of the CD
for the installer components. CD is mounted on another machine, and
reachable via anonymous FTP.
Have tried with each (separately) of the (i) net-install images, (ii)
HD boot images, and (iii) the boot images on CD 1 of the install set.
Each fails, though differently.
Net installer starts with language, keyboard etc, then configures the
network card. But when trying to find its components, the installer
complains it cannot find the packages files. The FTP log shows that
it finds the package file, but fails to find a GPG file which it
presumably uses to validate when doing Internet-based installs. So,
the net-installer would find the components on a local FTP server, but
'also' requires the GPG files which are not on the CD.
HD boot installer first complains (quite reasonably) that there are no
files on the HD (it is unpartitioned yet). After skipping that phase
to start a network fetch of the files, the HD installer complains that
it cannot find a network card. (The HD installer probably has fewer
drivers than the net-installer, and the network card is an SiS 190
built into the mainboard.) The HD installer helpfully offers to find
some more drivers if a floppy is available, but there is no floppy on
the machine, so more or less stuck, there.
Finally, the CD boot image (copied into the TFTP server from the CD
itself) complains (again, reasonably) that there is no CD, and
skipping to try a network fetch of the installer components results in
the same 'no network card' problem that the HD installer hits.
I'd like to get the net-installer working across the local network -
it is the only installer with the SiS190 driver, but I cannot see a
way round the installer wanting the absent GPG files.
Any ideas for a way forward would be much appreciated. The install
guide mentions NFS, and I wondered if the CD had to be mounted on NFS
on another machine, and whether I have to change the pxelinux.cfg file
to tell the base linux to look for NFS. But, I haven't found an NFS
server for windows (yet), so I'm not confident of that.
What has anyone else done to install from LAN mounted CDs?
--
rgds Bernie
Sheridan Hutchinson
> Trying to install Etch onto a machine with blank HD but no floppy or
> CD; no internet connection is available at the site.
This sounds like a pain in the butt. Can I suggest a simpler solution?
I would probably just take the HDD out of the machine and put it in
another machine of the same architecture (as in 32/64 bit if you're
using Intel/AMD) that has a DVD drive. I would then do the most skinny
installation possible from a downloaded and burnt DVD of the Debian
installer and boot into the new system.
Next, hard disk space permitting, I would copy the actual ISO's of the 3
Debian DVD's to the HDD and remember that you can mount ISO's directly
as loopback devices (google will help you work the details). All you
need to do now is ensure that fstab mounts those ISO's to three seperate
loopback devices upon boot, and updated your /etc/apt/sources.list to
reflect the location of three DVD's.
When you put the HDD back in the original machine it will boot as long
as you're using a stock kernel. There may be some minor configuration
issues but essentially the machine will boot.
Some people are preparing machines in VirtualBox before deploying them
to servers.
Thanks to the versatility of the Debian stock kernel, you can take your
installation almost anywhere.
There will ultimately be a few details that you'll need to discover for
yourself during this process however I'm confident you'll be able to
achieve your goal.
--
Regards,
Sheridan Hutchinson
sher...@shezza.org
Magnate
>
> Trying to install Etch onto a machine with blank HD but no floppy or
> CD; no internet connection is available at the site. After lots of
> reading of the Debian and Debian-Installer manuals, installing across
> a local network seems possible (sects 2.2.5 & 4.6 of the installation
> guide). PXE boot from a TFTP server works ok, starting the basic
> linux and initrd.gz. But problems 'seeing' the remainder of the CD
> for the installer components. CD is mounted on another machine, and
> reachable via anonymous FTP.
>
> Have tried with each (separately) of the (i) net-install images, (ii)
> HD boot images, and (iii) the boot images on CD 1 of the install set.
> Each fails, though differently.
The net-install is definitely the one to use - it's the one for installing
from any remote repo, not necessarily via the internet. Both the other two
will expect to find the repo on the local machine.
> I'd like to get the net-installer working across the local network -
> it is the only installer with the SiS190 driver, but I cannot see a
> way round the installer wanting the absent GPG files.
>
> Any ideas for a way forward would be much appreciated. The install
> guide mentions NFS, and I wondered if the CD had to be mounted on NFS
> on another machine, and whether I have to change the pxelinux.cfg file
> to tell the base linux to look for NFS. But, I haven't found an NFS
> server for windows (yet), so I'm not confident of that.
>
> What has anyone else done to install from LAN mounted CDs?
My advice would be to dump the contents of the CD onto your server
(whichever machine is providing the PXE/tftp stuff when the client boots),
and turn it into a local Debian repository. I don't know exactly how to do
this, but I know that it is possible to create your own repository and use
it to serve packages (including installer udebs) to installers when no
internet access is available. (Getting the missing GPG files may be part of
this exercise!)
Your post seems to hint that your PXE/tftp server is a Windows machine,
which may make it more difficult to set up as a local repo. Not sure though.
Please do post here how you get on though, I'd be interested in how it turns
out. I'm setting up a tftp server on my LAN, but the assumption is that I'll
always have internet access for the installs. I'd be interested to know what
the solution is when there is no net access.
Good luck,
CC