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Here is a step-by-step description of how we would remotely install the operating system on a TQMbox server in automatic (uninterruptible) mode.
TQMbox is a service mark of A2I COMMUNICATIONS.
Total keyboard time: About three minutes, spent as follows:
Total install time: About thirty to sixty minutes, during most of which we need not be present at our keyboard.
Let’s begin by choosing the disk partitioning scheme.
We will point our web browser towards our Server Configuration web page (see live demo), enter desired information, and submit it. For this example, we will use the system-supplied default partioning scheme, but we will enable software RAID by selecting the RAID radio button. (Try out the live demo.) In the subsequent steps shown below, the configuration that we have just generated will automatically be used.
In another window, we now connect to the serial console of our TQMbox server using our ssh client.
(If we don't have an ssh client available, we can go to the Activity Links page and initiate an ssh session from any Java-enabled web browser.)
Now we go back to our web browser window, that still shows the Server Configuration web page, and we click on the “Power Cycle” button. Within a minute or so, as the server powers up, our ssh window shows us the Initial Menu, which looks something like this:
After we remotely power on the server, we see a menu similar to this:
GNU GRUB version 0.95 (640K lower / 523136K upper memory) --------------------------------------------------------- 0: Boot hd0 1: Utilities menu --------------------------------------------------------- Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.
If we hit the ENTER key, or simply wait a few seconds, the machine will attempt to boot normally off disk hd0, i.e., the first hard disk. This will fail if this is a new server, because you are initially provided with a server that has no operating system on the disk.
We use the down arrow (or v) key to select item 1 and then hit the ENTER key. This gives us the Utilities Menu, of which only the essential text is shown below.
------------------------------------------------------------------- 0: Boot hd0 1: Fedora Core 2 Install/Rescue 2: Fedora Core 3 Install/Rescue 3: RedHat Linux 9 Install/Rescue 4: Mandrake Linux 10 Install/Rescue 5: Mandrake Linux 10.1 Install/Rescue 6: CentOS 3.3 Install/Rescue 7: PLD Rescue CD from http://rescuecd.pld-linux.org/ 8: System Memory Test 3.1a from http://www.memtest86.com/ 9: System Memory Test+ 1.27 from http://www.memtest.org/ 10: Test/Experimental Options -------------------------------------------------------------------
Let’s choose to install Fedora Core 2, which is the successor to RedHat Linux 9. After selecting item 1 and hitting the ENTER key, we see on the screen:
------------------------------------------------------------------- 0: boot hd0 1: fc2 rescue mode 2: fc2 install : uninterruptible : uses web configuration : CLOBBERS DISKS 3: fc2 install : interactive : uses web configuration : CLOBBERS DISKS 4: fc2 install : manual : ignores web configuration : for Linux experts 5: fc2 upgrade : manual : ignores web configuration : experimental 6: Utilities Menu -------------------------------------------------------------------
For this example, we will do the "uninterruptible" install, which essentially does an unattended install, leaving us free to do other things in the mean time.. We select item 2 and hit the ENTER key. We see next:
Highlighted entry is 2: Booting 'fc2 install : uninterruptible : uses web configuration : CLOBBERS DISKS' Password:
Since we are about to clobber everything on the disk, we are required to enter a password. The password is not a security measure here, but rather, it is just a way of making sure the user really wants to do the uninterruptible operating system install, which will wipe out any existing user data on disk. If we change our mind at this point, we can just hit the ENTER key without entering the password, and we will be back at the menu.
The standard password for these menus is: "risky".
We enter this password. And now the operating system is about to install itself, from beginning to end, without needing any more input from us. On the screen we see:
Password: ***** dhcp Command .2x was not immediately accepted, 1 ticks! Address: 192.160.13.61 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Server: 192.160.13.77 Gateway: 192.160.13.21 root (nd) Filesystem type is tftp, using whole disk kernel /fc2-vmlinuz headless quiet ... various kernel options ... [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x14ddba] initrd /fc2-initrd.img [Linux-initrd @ 0x37d44000, 0x2ab35b bytes] ...
The first few lines above show that the server has usd DHCP to initialize its network parameters, i.e., its IP address, netmask, and gateway, and obtained the IP address of a machine from which it will copy the operating system files. We, the user, don’t have to know or enter any of these values. As we continue to watch, we see some more boot-time messages, then:
The operating system about to be installed greets us thus:
Welcome to Fedora Coreand then proceeds to generate the filesystems in the sizes and combinations that we previously specified on the Server Configuration web page above.
Fedora Core (C) 2004 Red Hat, Inc.
+---------------------+ Formatting +----------------------+
| |
| Formatting / file system... |
| |
| 11% |
| |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
<tab>/<alt-tab> between elements | <space> selects | <f12> next screen
As each package gets installed, we see updated status information:
Fedora Core (C) 2004 Red Hat, Inc.
+------------------+ Package Installation +------------------+
| |
| Name : kernel-2.6.5-1.358-i686 |
| Size : 58344k |
| Summary: The Linux kernel (the core of the Linux |
| operating system) |
| |
| Status: Installing... |
| |
| 100% |
| |
| Packages Bytes Time |
| Total : 1613 6206M 0:33:13 |
| Completed: 90 368M 0:01:58 |
| Remaining: 1523 5838M 0:31:15 |
| |
| 5% |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
<Tab>/<Alt-Tab> between elements | <Space> selects | <F12> next screen
The installation continues on its own until it completes. The finally, we see this screen:
Fedora Core (C) 2004 Red Hat, Inc.
+----------------------------+ Complete +----------------------------+
| |
| Congratulations, your Fedora Core installation is complete. |
| |
| Remove any installation media (diskettes or CD-ROMs) used during |
| the installation process and press <Enter> to reboot your system. |
| |
| |
| +--------+ |
| | Reboot | |
| +--------+ |
| |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
<Enter> to reboot
At this point we hit the ENTER key, and our newly-installed system reboots itself, and we see its kernel boot messages, and finally, the login prompt. We can now disconnect from the serial console port, and log into our new TQMbox server across the Internet using ssh. We log in as root using the root password we requested on the Server Configuration web page, and then set a new password.
That’s it—almost!
There is one more critical thing still to be done. The automated operating system install above has installed Fedora Core 2 substantially as it was officially released. We now need to install any bug fixes and security fixes that might have been issued. It turns out that there are a lot of them—totalling several hundred megabytes. Not all of those fixes are relevant to the default configuration of our server, but a majority of them are. Since our TQMbox server is on the Internet, we need to update it so it includes the latest issued security fixes—otherwise it will be vulnerable to intruders.
The automated installation procedure that we have followed above also makes updates easy. It has left our new server preconfigured to point to an update server on the local network that holds an archive of all the officially-issued fixes. The programs needed to apply the updates, i.e., “yum” (Yellowdog Updater) and its supporting utilities, are already part of the Fedora Core 2 distribution that has just been installed. Our operating system installation procedure has already taken care of installing some PGP keys needed to securely identify downloaded packages. All that we need to do, after logging in as root into our new server, is to type:
# yum -y update
and all the relevant updates automatically get installed. No intevening reboots are needed. Since the update server from which these updates are downloaded is on the local network, the transfer is quick and fast, but the package processing does take some time. We can go away for a while, and when we come back, the server has updated itself. After these updates, if a new kernel was installed, we will need to reboot the machine just once to make the new kernel active.
That’s it! Our new TQMbox server is now ready for use.
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