Suggestions for the Installer (regarding network installs)

[Jeremy Katz]

On Mon, 2003-10-13 at 07:53, Rudi Chiarito wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2003 at 10:34:18PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > Actually, the rescuecd.iso can also be used for kicking off an install
> > and has all of the second stage.  Installing packages from FTP/HTTP with
> 
> On a related note, would you accept patches to create "USB boot images",
> for kickstarting purposes? E.g. in a cluster you could dump floppies and
> CDs altogether, booting installations from removable Flash storage (you
> can still use USB floppy or CD drives if you really miss those long
> startup times). Yes, you could as well set up nodes to boot from the
> net, but some might prefer kickstart's kssendmac option to register an
> Ethernet address (and enable DHCP/netboot for it afterwards).

I've thought about it -- I'm just not 100% convinced of the usefulness
of doing so (since it takes up another 4 or 5 megs on the first CD).  I
just got a USB pendrive over the weekend, so figured I'd at least look
at it.  Should basically require making a fs, copying the files from the
isolinux/ directory on the CD, mv isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg and then run
syslinux on the filesystem.  Or that would be my hope :-)

> I have been hacking the anaconda-runtime scripts to sneak a given
> network driver onto the boot floppy. You need to take out the splash
> screen to make room for the extra module - no problem, as it's for
> headless systems anyway. It's not much more than an experiment, because
> this way only the smallest modules can be crammed in. Not to mention
> that floppies are slooooooow. Still, one might have legacy systems whose
> BIOS can't boot from USB, so it's not necessarily a waste of time.

Unfortunately, this release is probably the last where floppies have any
relevance.  From 2.6 kernels so far, I really don't see how we're going
to be able to continue to have boot disks after moving to a 2.6 kernel.

[snip]

> Here's a mostly harmless bug for you.
> 
> In mk-images::makeinitrd() you initialise INITRDMODULES, but proceed to
> use LOADERMODULES.

Thanks, fixed.  Bugzilla helps in the future (to avoid losing things)

Cheers,

Jeremy