100% network (remote) install -- No direct machine access?

[Robert Citek]

On Monday, Jan 3, 2005, at 14:50 US/Central, Philip Rowlands wrote:
> With remote machines, I'd be sure to test, test, test locally before
> reinstalling for real; the part to pay the most attention to would be
> the network setup.

Another item to consider is to have either two machines connected via 
serial connections or an IP-based KVM.  In that way if the install 
fails for whatever reason, you can remotely connect to the other box or 
the KVM and work on the machine.

For a serial connection, you would use two machines and a null modem 
cable.  This assumes that each machine has an available serial port.  
First, you would connect the null modem cable from the serial port of 
one machine to the serial of another.  Then you would run minicom on 
the second machine to listen for the first machine.  Lastly, you would 
modify the grub.conf on the first machine to have grub and the kernel 
output to a serial console:

   http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?SerialConsole

You then reboot the first machine.  Minicom should then show you the 
grub console window.

In this way you can access the second machine via ssh and then use 
minicom to connect to the first.  Once the first machine is upgraded, 
you can do the reverse roles to upgrade the second machine (if needed).

The serial connections are more limited but cost less.  KVM over IP is 
a much cleaner solution, but significantly more expensive.

As always, let us know what you decided and how it went.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/downloads
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