Installing Linux over a small LAN

[GNU/br0wni3]

Hi everybody!

Well, how would i go to install linux in a little LAN of about 30 machines? The redhat bible i've got only vaguely describes that you need to set up a NFS and pull the files from there... great, but how? :D

Is there any links, NHF, gurus out there that could describe this process a little deeper? like, how does one set up a NFS, how do you have to configure it, and how do you make the machines pull the install files from the NFS?

Thanks in advance!

[milanuk]

Well, as w/ most things, stop by your friendly neighborhood Linux Documentation Project mirror. I believe they have an NFS-HOWTO, though it may be somewhat dated, but still useful.

I haven't done this recently, but w/ RedHat, I think you can create a directory, say, '/mnt/redhat/7.0' and then put in your first CD (assuming 7.x here, w/ 6.2 you can get away w/ one disk and its a lot easier), mount it as usual under /mnt/cdrom, then copy the contents of /mnt/cdrom/Redhat/RPMS to the new directory /mnt/redhat/7.0 . Then, once that is complete, change to the second CD, and do the same thing. Now you have all the files available that your install will need.

Create a network boot disk by putting the first CD back in, mounting, and changing to the /mnt/cdrom/images directory. There you should see files w/ names like 'boot.img', 'drivers.img', 'bootnet.img', etc. The bootnet.img file is the one you want. The simple way to do this is as follows: Put a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive, then do a 'fdformat /dev/fd0' to format the disk. Then once that is complete, you will need to do the following command: 'dd if=bootnet.img of=/dev/fd0' What this does is use the command 'dd' to write the floppy image 'bootnet.img' to directly to the floppy disk. Note that we did _not_ need to mount the floppy for this to work. Make very sure that you get 'if=' (input file) and 'of=' (output file) in the right order. In this instance, it shouldn't hurt too much since the file image is on a read-only CD, but otherwise it could be painfull!!

You need to make sure you have the NFS rpms installed. I forget what the exact names are, but I believe the nfs-utils rpm is just a 'client' package, not a server package. You will need the server package installed. Then from the command line, as root, run the command 'setup'. This will bring up a curses based config tool similar to the text based install. There should be an option for start/stop services. Choose this and start both portmapper and the nfs server, then exit the program. A way to check this, or even 'do it by hand' is to do '/etc/rc.d/init.d/nfsserver status' Alternate commands to 'status' are 'start/stop/reload' Assuming at this point that you see the green [OK] messages signifying that all went well, now we can edit /etc/exports. This is the file that tells the system what files to make available via the nfs server, and to whom. For a relatively simple example, make an entry like:

/mnt/redhat/7.0 * (ro)

This lets literally any NFS client access that directory, read-only. Probably not the most secure, you definitely want to either comment out the line after you are done w/ the installs, or read the various man pages to tighten things up later on. For right now, it should get the ball rolling.

At this point, you should be ready to take the boot disk that we made, plug it in another machine on the network, and boot. You will need to tell it the ip address and netmask of the server, unless you have a working DNS system that will allow you to just use the servers hostname. Then tell it to look in the /mnt/redhat/7.0 directory on that machine, and it should (key word: should) be off and running.

Hope this helps. I can't tell you much more, since I don't have a useful linux box handy for several more weeks. Read up on the NFS-HOWTO, look at any guides or anything else that has to do w/ NFS, as it will be the most aggravating part of this, IMHO.

Monte

[WeDeliver]

NFS is thoroughly described on www.linuxdoc.org. (http://www.linuxdoc.org.) Here are some links:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/LDP/nag/node141.html
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/NFS-Root.html
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO/index.html

Is this LAN only to be comprised of Linux/UNIX machines? If not, I would suggest also configuring samba for the Windows (ack) stations, Netatalk for the MAC's (which works great, a 3 step process basically for connectivity and file sharing), and IPX services for Linux. Even if you are not using them now, might as well take steps to prepare for their use in the future.

[manux]

if you have access to a *nix box that has a cdrom drive, ftp server or a webserver, you could do a network installation from there.

to do this first mount your cdrom, and then create a symbolic link in your ftp or apache home directory to point to the directory your mounted your cdrom in.

now, create a network boot disk which you can use to install the linux distribution of your choice.

[GNU/br0wni3]

hey..thanks for all the input!

Well, to add a little more detail, the thing is that we are going to have a little linux seminar at our school's comp lab.. so we have to have all the machines with linux preinstalled so we can get down to the course quick... but the machines are kinda old, and they dont have a cd-rom drive (wich would maeke things easier...), so.. thats why i needed to know how to make a LAN install..

Oh, and theyre just gonna be used for 1 day, and after that, we'll remove the partitions.. so no need for too much security here! :)

[GNU/br0wni3]

Hmm.. after reading a little about NFS.. i think i might have got it wrong.. the thing is, all the machines currently run under winNT, so, if i want to do a from scratch installation of linux, but have no cd-rom drive, i dont think i need NFS, but instead i only need to place the installation files in the LAN's NT server, and just tell the linux installation program to pull them from there, right?

im a little confused...

thanks for your help!