[Rocks-Discuss] Rocks 5.4 (Maverick) Install via USB using UNetbootin

[Jeremy]

Aloha Rocks Users -

I'm excited to build my first Rocks Cluster on a rack full of 1U
servers! Perhaps it's not uncommon: These servers do not have
optical drives. In an attempt to be clever, I thought I should try
installing Rocks 5.4 (Maverick) via a 8GB USB media using UNetbootin.
Conceptually, this seems very logical (to me) as I don't have an
optical USB drive.

Alas, attempts to install have been thwarted and I am turning to this
community for help and advise.

Progress thus far. . .

>From an Ubuntu Server 10.04.1 host I created a bootable USB device
using the kernel-5.4-0.i386.disk1.iso image and UNetbootin.
NOTE: It seems the media should be formatted FAT32 or EXT2 (I used
gparted to create an 8 GB EXT2 filesystem).

Copied these iso images to / of the USB media:
-> area51+base+bio+condor+ganglia+hpc+kernel+os+sge+web-server+xen-5.4.i386.disk1.iso
-> service-pack-5.4.1-1.i386.disk1.iso
-> torque-5.4.0-1.i386.disk1.iso
Also created symbolic links to the .iso images in the /kernel
directory (you'll see why in a few steps).

Following suggestions from this post:
https://lists.sdsc.edu/pipermail/npaci-rocks-discussion/2009-July/040885.html
I modify ks.cfg on / of the USB media and I comment out the first line
(referring to a url) and add:
harddrive --partition sda1 --dir kernel/

Booted the "frontend" selecting "Build" from the UNetbootin generated menu.
Manually configured IPv4 address for public interface; the first
"Error" manifests:
| Error downloading kickstart file |
This is expected -- change cdrom:ks.cfg to:
hd:sda1:ks.cfg

Here's the show stopper:
| Select Partition |
What partition and directory on that partition hold the CD (iso9660)
images for Rocks? If you don't see the disk drive you're using listed
here, press F2 to configure additional devices.
/dev/sda1
kernel/
| Error |
Device /dev/sda1 does not appear to contain Rocks CDROM images.

Let's try the partition without specifying a directory:
/dev/sda1

| Error |
Device /dev/sda1 does not appear to contain Rocks CDROM images.

Let's look at some debugging (because there is no shell available!):
<CTRL><ALT><F3>
INFO : mntloop loop7 on /tmp/loopimage as
/tmp/hdimage/kernel//area51+base+bio+condor+ganglia+hpc+kernel+os+sge+web-server+xen-5.4.i386.disk1.iso
fd is 21
ERROR : open file to loop mount /tmp/loopimage/images/stage2.img failed
INFO : umounting loopback /mnt/runtime loop0
ERROR : LOOP_CLR_FD failed for mnt/runtime loop0 (No such device or address)
INFO : umounting loopback /tmp/loopimage loop7
. . .

It goes through each .iso image available in /kernel and/or / with the
same four INFO/ERROR logs (changing the name of the .iso each time).
The first thing that I notice is two forward slashes "//" after
/tmp/hdimage/kernel in the INFO statement above.

The installer routine seems to acknowledge the .iso image files (in /
and /kernel) as the names show up in the INFO logging and
<CTRL><ALT><F4> shows:
<7>ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A

Is it possible to get a shell during the install? I'd like to see
what's mounted and do some debugging of my own.
What filesystems are mounted and where should I put the .iso images?
Has anyone had luck installing Rocks via USB Flash Disk or USB Thumb
Drive or USB Media other than optical?

Terms I googled before posting to the mailing list:
Installing Rocks 5.4 (Maverick) with USB
Install Rocks USB
Install Rocksclusters USB
Install Rocks via USB
Install Rocks with USB
Install Rocks 5.4 USB

--
Remy Je
rem...@gmail.com

[Mason J. Katz]

Most USB CDROM drives work just fine, we've done this for several of
our servers w/o optical drives.

mason j. katz
+1.619.800.0655

[Bart Brashers]

Do these nodes not support PXE booting? If they're reasonably modern,
they most likely do, and it would be much easier -- in fact, it's the
Rocks default...

Bart

Aloha Rocks Users -

--
Remy Je
rem...@gmail.com

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[Jeremy]

Post script:
The question was posed: "Do these nodes not support PXE booting?"
The answer is "Yes! The nodes support PXE booting."

I'm trying to install the "Frontend" so that I can start installing
the compute nodes via PXE! Is there a workaround? I'm starting a
*new* cluster from scratch.

--
Remy Je
rem...@gmail.com