[syslinux] Adding memdisk or similar when booting linux

[Kjetil.Mikkelborg at kongsberg.com]

Ok,

First off, thnx guys for giving me some hints to how to solve my problem with driver disks, I am not sure it will work with my setup (basicly because I relies so much on PXE), but I will use some time to figure it out at least ;)

And for you Dag, first of, my approach of fixing this is probably due to lack of support in redhat enterprise itself, so I can really see where your questions comes from!
the first issue, about install/reinstall Is just i feature I needed because I have to be 110% sure the hardware my users are using actually is well behaving (and my company have dedicated personell for installing windows, so what the heck, let them install linux and verify that too).

The whole concept relies on using the comboot complex.c menu system included with syslinux, and modififying it to read from a register file located on the tftp server. This approach is not extremly scalable, but will do for now in my usage area.

This register file is modified by a rpm package installed by yum at first boot (after install). (hence first install or reinstall, if entry in register file exists, we are reinstalling). And everytime my clients are booting their client after that, the same package has installed a init script which check to see if it has any changes (like new IP, new hostname or alias), and contacts a server with its updates (makes dns and friends allways updated in a dhcp enviroment).

This central server when asked for making changes, verify the changes, and updates the tftp register file if any changes has been made. So this ensures that if a client changes hostname, the pxe install menu actually knows what it is called (using MAC address as system-id in the register file).

Ive also password protected override for install, so if first install (no entry in register file), my install crew can punch in their password, register what the client actually should be named, and start installing (post script in anaconda uses HOSTNAME= variable in cmdline from kernel boot).


My second thing (installquirks), is actually just some of the same code reads dmi info, and checks for product name string, and parses it with help from a installquirks file found in pxelinux tftp server. If we find a entry which matches whats inserted in installquirks file, then we append what that record holds when installing. The nice thing about this, is that anaconda adds by default every "quirk" the user use for install to grub when installing grub, so this change is only needed on install.

The coolest thing, would offcourse be if someone had a own project for maintaining a installquirks register on the net, so it could be read (with help of a tiny comboot program) at install by syslinux as default. But that is a pretty big task.

So my approaches is somewhat hackish, but really makes installing and maintaining large installation of linux clients doable :) So now I just have to get to the buttom of the driver disk problem!

--Kjetil

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On Behalf Of Dag Wieers
Sent: 14. mars 2008 02:55
To: For discussion of SYSLINUX and tftp-hpa
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Adding memdisk or similar when booting linux

On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Kjetil.Mikkelborg at kongsberg.com wrote:

> Thanx guys for the help on understanding howto read dmi info!
> I now have a custom boot menu for install of different linux versions
> based if they have been installed before (reinstall is ok for users,
> first install is not), and installquirks like if we detect odd hardware,
> we add install options to redhat installer so it can install anyhow (for
> instance hp dc7800 who needs pci=nommconf as kernel append for booting).

Kjetil,

You would do me a very big favor in showing me how you do this (or even
beter, writing up a document for the wiki how you achieved this).

I am very interested to implement the same and I am confident that this is
something Red Hat should be doing as well (or if not, I would like to see
within the CentOS project what is possible)

Thanks in advance,
--
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]

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