[K12OSN] FTP install steps?

["Terrell Prudé Jr."]

Joseph Bishay wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> As was recommened by a couple of people on the mailing list, I'm
> looking into upgrading my network to K12LTSP EL-5.  I would like to
> pretend I'm cool and cutting-edge, as well as saving time and CDs, by
> installing from the ftp site
> ftp://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/pub/K12LTSP/5.0.0-EL-32bit/iso
>
> I have downloaded and burned the first CD image successfully and I am
> able to boot off it and start the installation process.  However, I
> *always* fail at putting the ftp information in correctly and the
> installation never works properly.  On top of that, the only way you
> find out that the installation fails is not at the point at which you
> enter the ftp site info, but later on in the install when the server
> attempts to access the site.
>
> If someone can please provide me with step-by-step instructions I
> will, 1) sing their praises here and 2) update the wiki so as to
> include that information so it's easily available for everyone else.
>
> Looking forward to being cool,
> Joseph

The way I do it is to download the DVD image and set up my own FTP 
server with its contents.  Actually, I find NFS somewhat easier.  
Anyway, here's how.  There are three parties in this process.  They are 
the following:

A.)  the box you're using to download the CentOS 5 DVD image (probably 
your "daily driver" workstation--mine's a Kubuntu box),

B.)  the box that you're going to use as an "installation file server" 
when you do your installs (mine's a Slackware box, but this can also be 
the same as the box in A.), and

C.)  the box on which you're going to perform the actual FTP 
installation once all this is set up--that is, your K12LTSP 5EL 
server-to-be.


With the introductions out of the way, let's get to it.


1.)  Download the DVD ISO image.  It's nearly 4GB.

2.)  Mount that DVD ISO image as a so-called "loop" mount.  That's done 
as follows, using "/mnt/dvdiso" as my mount point.

       mount -t iso9660 -o loop NameOfDVDISOImage.iso /mnt/dvdiso

3.)  Find some box with enough space for the contents of the DVD and 
copy the entire contents of the DVD (everything under /mnt/dvdiso, in 
this example) to that box.  Any such box will do; I'm assuming here that 
it runs some GNU/Linux distro.  On my "installation file server", I use 
the directory /var/nfsshare, because I started out doing NFS installs 
originally.  You can use whatever dir. you want.  Ensure that 
permissions for this entire subdirectory tree are set to world-readable, 
for obvious reasons.  :-)  You do that like this.

        chmod -R 755 /var/nfsshare

4.)  Install vsftpd.  On RH/CentOS/Fedora, this is done by "yum install 
vsftpd".

5.)  On this "installation file server", set up your FTP daemon to point 
to that directory.  With vsftpd, the config file is 
/etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf.  Ensure that anonymous access is turned on in 
that config file (it's well commented).  By default, it is turned on.

6.)  In /etc/passwd, change the home directory for user "ftp" to point 
to your CentOS installation directory.  In this example, that's 
/var/nfsshare.

7.)  /sbin/service vsftpd start

8.)  Time for a basic functionality test.  From another box, try FTP'ing 
into that "installation file server" and downloading any file.  That 
should work.

9.)  Now that you've made sure basic functionality works, here's what 
you do when you want to do an FTP install.  For "server name", put in 
the IP address of this "installation file server."  For your directory, 
just put in "/".  That oughta do it.


Since I regularly do CentOS installations at work, I have hugely 
benefited from setting up an installation file server.  NFS installs are 
equally easy, BTW.  All you have to do is install the NFS server and set 
up your /etc/exports file to look like this.

    # My /etc/exports file
    #
    /var/nfsshare   *(ro,async,all_squash)

Then, "/sbin/service nfs restart" for that new exports file to take 
effect.  And so, during your network installs, you'd use the same IP 
address, and the directory you'd put in would be "/var/nfsshare".

And thus shall coolness envelope you...for you will have become more 
1337....

--TP
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