Boot to live via PXE?

[jason lytle]

I want to install Security Onion on a remote server and I only have text output via serial redirect. I have PXE setup and it boots the SecurityOnion ISO ok but since it goes directly to graphical mode, I can't get that output over serial redirection. This would be ok because it automatically then tries to boot to live but then I hit an error....

Currently I am testing on a box where I do have physical access so I choose to boot to live or install then get the following error:

(initramfs) unable to find medium containing live file system

here is my PXE config:
label securityOnion
keeppxe
kernel memdisk
initrd securityonion.iso
append iso

So, I tried using the LiveCD Tools for CentOS:
https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/PxeBoot

but I get an error when I try to convert the SecurityOnion ISO:

/tmp> livecd-iso-to-pxeboot /tmp/securityonion.iso
The ISO image doesn't look like a LiveCD ISO image to me.

in the livecd-iso-to-pxeboot script I see this section:

# Does it look like an ISO?
if [ ! -d $CDMNT/isolinux -o ! -f $CDMNT/isolinux/initrd0.img -o ]; then
echo "The ISO image doesn't look like a LiveCD ISO image to me."
exitclean
fi

when I mount the SecurityOnion ISO, I see:
> ls -la isolinux/
total 272
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Sep 4 16:44 .
dr-xr-xr-x 7 root root 2048 Sep 4 16:58 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2048 Sep 4 16:58 boot.cat
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 24576 Sep 4 16:43 isolinux.bin
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 912 Sep 4 16:44 isolinux.cfg
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 89605 Sep 4 16:44 splash.png
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 155792 Sep 4 16:44 vesamenu.c32

I don't see an initrd0.img anywhere. Is isolinux.bin the equivalent of initrd0.img?

anyone tried booting SecurityOnion Live ISO from PXE with success?

thanks for any help

[jason lytle]

UPDATE: Although my PXE server is runnong on CentOS, I found this guide for booting an Ubuntu Live CD:

http://www.howtogeek.com/61263/how-to-network-boot-pxe-the-ubuntu-livecd/

I'm going to give this a try and update here if I have any success.

SecurityOnion seems like a great tool but I wish it were easier to install remotely - I can see a lot of benefit to sysadmins if this were easier or if there were a way to install via commandline/text/init 3 rather than graphical/init 5 only

[Doug Burks]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:02 AM, jason lytle <ja...@mangdub.com> wrote:
> SecurityOnion seems like a great tool but I wish it were easier to install remotely - I can see a lot of benefit to sysadmins if this were easier or if there were a way to install via commandline/text/init 3 rather than graphical/init 5 only

Hi Jason,

Have you considered installing Ubuntu 12.04 Server (no GUI), then
adding our PPA and packages as described in the Installation guide?
https://code.google.com/p/security-onion/wiki/Installation#If_you_want_to_quickly_evaluate_Security_Onion_on_your_preferred


--
Doug Burks

[jason lytle]

thanks for the reply!
No I hadn't considered it because my environments are all CentOS but I will look into this as an option just for the machine that will run this tool.

really looking forward to getting into this!
thanks!!!