Re: Installing Etch With TFTP: Linux starts, I/O Stops
On Sunday 12 October 2008, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 05:12:47AM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > On Saturday 11 October 2008, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 01:06:41AM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > > > On Friday 10 October 2008, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > > > > Where is the actual install media?
> > > >
> > > > That's one thing I'm not clear about. Not one article I've
> > > > found on the web that has explained this has said where to put
> > > > any install media. I was beginning to wonder if data was
> > > > automatically pulled from a URL or something since I did not
> > > > see instructions on placing any other install files.
> > >
> > > Indeed, the install guide is not so clear at this point. It
> > > merely points you to a complete tarball that includes the whole
> > > PXE network layout. But doesn't really tell you how to add it to
> > > an existing layout.
> >
> > I did find out, from experience, though, that there is no need for
> > an installation medium. The entire install was either in the
> > initrd or downloaded by the installer that was in there. I don't
> > have that page in my browser at the moment so I don't remember if
> > it was in a wiki or not. I think it may have been. I did get an
> > account on the Soekris wiki, which had the instructions for
> > everything to do except how to set up the PXEBoot (and for that it
> > linked to the page we're discussing) and I added in the part about
> > specifying the console as the serial device and the baud rate in
> > the config file.
> >
> > Oh, and as an experiment, considering all the trouble I had, at one
> > point I just unzipped the entire netboot.tgz (or was it tar.gz?)
> > file in the tftpboot directory and edited the default config file
> > and it worked perfectly. I think it was easier to add 2-3 lines to
> > the config file than to be straight on which file to delete and
> > which link to delete and replace.
>
> Which is why I prefer a preseed file to point to the mirror.
At this point, I've got mine working and likely won't need it again
until/unless I reinstall in the future instead of just upgrading from
Etch to Lenny and so on. For now mine stays as it is, mainly as part
of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" idea, but this is something
I'll certainly look into if I have to change it around in the future.
The irony is the PXEBoot server I set up on the old system will be
transferred to the one I just set up using PXEBoot soon. I'll just
transfer it with rsync. When it comes time to make changes, I'll look
at the preseed file and see if that works for me. Thanks for making
the point.
Hal
Reply to: