Re: Remote Install
On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 02:00:08PM -0800, Jason Self wrote:
> Somewhere in a basement on the other side of the planet from me sits a
> machine with an x86 processor, no OS, and 160GB of local drive space.
> I want to install Debian Sarge onto it. The only person near enough to
> do it has no computer experience, although I've convinced them &
> they're willing to do as much as pressing the power button and
> inserting a CD.
>
> My question is how to get Debian onto such a machine. My first thought
> was to hack debian-31r4-i386-netinst.iso so that it immediately sets
> up the network connection via DHCP and run sshd. Then I can run the
> installer remotely.
>
> There doesn't seem much data on Google about what to alter on the .iso
> to bring up networking and ssh on boot. Any input?
>
The best way is to do the install from this serial console. You can use
a modem. This works especially well if the computer also has internet
access (as you suggest re DHCP). Set the modem itself to auto-answer.
Since the computer will have a display card, you'll need to alter the
boot media (on floppy and usb that's syslinux.cfg) to go to serial
console (both for the syslinux bootloader and a kernel parameter for the
installer). On woody's install CD there were instructions for this. I
would test these changes on a computer you're beside first, then get the
changes to the other side of the world. For this application, USB
hd-media beats CDROM.
What this gives you is full access to the computer by remote controll
(except for the bios unless you're lucky) including all boot messages,
just as if you were sitting in front of it.
There are a few HOWTOs that will be useful: modem, text-terminal,
remote-terminal-console (names not exact).
To save on long-distance, if there is a second computer near the target,
connect them with a null-modem cable, ssh into this helper computer and
run minicom to access the target's serial console.
If you want a robust logging of console messages you could connect a
second null-modem cable and run a logging program on the helper computer
and give two serial console arguments to the kernel.
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