[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler trac-ticket 36: Non-Linux OS support for PXE (Enhancement)

[Matt Hyclak]

On Sun, Mar 09, 2008 at 12:22:54AM +0100, Pablo Iranzo Gómez enlightened us:
> 	I've been playing arround with http://unattended.sourceforge.net/
> 
> 	That proyect contains some files, between them, a kernel and a
> initrd which contain a small linux system which mounts via samba a
> ntinstall/install resource as drive Z: on DOSEMU/Non Linux and as /z on
> Linux from where it gets the whole files it needs (perl, etc) as well as
> automatization scripts.
> 
> 	After having all information ready (asks for partitioning,
> formatting, profile, etc) it just launches a "dosemu" session which does
> the non-linux install part (the one where it get files from network
> share), which, indeed, is the "problematic one", as on normal systems,
> you'll require network drivers, etc which usually linux has incorporated.
> 
> 	After first copy-and-install part, system reboots, installs
> operating system, and at the end starts again mounting samba share and
> continues doing the post-installation.
> 
> 	Integration with cobbler could be:
> 
> 	- cobbler check information regarding the share for samba pointing
> to standard folder for cobbler "import"'s (this utility want's OS in "os/"
> of the mount point
> 
> 	- Profile with referenced kernel and initrd for starting the
> "unattended" system
> 
> 	- Unattended profile creation from defined kickstart dunno what's
> the schema for Debian/SuSE profiles, as I did no tested this, so that may
> not differ so much.
> 
> 	This could enable multi-os installations as previously said on
> this list:
> 
> 	- First start kickstart for partitioning (/boot, vfat, and LVM)
> 	- Change profile to Non-Linux installer
> 	- Install Non-Linux on vfat just formatting contents
> 	- Trigger change profile to Linux installer
> 	- Install linux on the /boot and LVM and install bootloader just
> 	  ormatting contents
> 
> 	At the end you will have one system with multiboot and two
> profiles for Linux and Non-linux that will just install on available
> partition (some kind of partitioning test will be nice to check if
> partition schema does not contain required partition, and then, change
> Profile to partitioning one and return back to this (¿cobbler feature for
> "toggling profile***"?)
> 
> 	?Has anyone played with this?
> 
> 	Regards
> 	Pablo
> 
> PD: The point in using a dosemu system to install another os could open
> the door to manage the installation of any other OS with DOS-based
> installer, or even more complex installations based on specific virtual
> machines/emulators that just prepare hard drive for other-os installer
> 
> 
> 
> ***: Flip your current profile to another one, then change it back to that
> profile when final cobbler step is done.
> 

I have been using unattended for several years now to deploy Windows
machines. It uses a dosboot or linuxboot+DOSEMU method to feed the winnt.exe
installer an answerfile and install the system as "unattendedly" as you
like. There are limitations to this boot method, however. I believe it is
currently limited to 32-bit OSes and Vista is not supported since they
removed the 16-bit winnt.exe installer.

There is a fork called unattended-gui which uses a slightly different
install method (still linux based) which I believe supports Vista and 64-bit
OSes. unattended-gui was compatible with the directory structure of
unattended for a while, but I believe recently began requiring use of its
own directory structure.

AFAIK, both install methods are PXE bootable. The way I do my configuration
is via a MySQL database which the installer connects to to fill in the
blanks of an unattended.txt template file. Technically, I don't see why
support for this couldn't be added to cobbler. If it were me looking at
doing the work, I'd probably start with unattended-gui and work from there.
unattended (while I love it and still use it) is mostly dead. There are a
couple folks still around with CVS commit access that keep the install
scripts updated, but there isn't a lot of movement on improving the
infrastructure bits much. There has been more interest lately, but with the
lack of support for Vista and 64-bit, I think folks who need those have been
migrating to unattended-gui.

I've CC'd Mario Gzuk, creator of unattended-gui, to see if he might have any
more insight. I've not used unattended-gui yet, so I don't know if it is
still using the same config.pl method to fill in the template as the
original unattended, or if it uses another method.

Matt

-- 
Matt Hyclak
Department of Mathematics 
Department of Social Work
Ohio University
(740) 593-1263