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Red Hat Software Businesses

Customized Red Hat Boot Disks 56

Posted by Roblimo from the yet-another-installation-trick dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "I've just opened up FezBox, a site which will build you your very own, customized Red Hat boot disks. It makes installing Red Hat 6.0 a breeze, and once you've got a boot disk created, you can typically do an installation in 5-10 minutes..." This ought to be especially interesting for low-volume clone builders who want a production-speed method of installing RH Linux but don't have a lot of time to invest in coming up with their own "custom" installs.
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Customized Red Hat Boot Disks More

Customized Red Hat Boot Disks

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  • I don't see the point over modifying the example ks.cfg file which comes with Red Hat. Only that the webbased tool is actually much slower and doesn't offer all the options.

    Especially that the ks.cfg created by fezbox.com contains

    # This kickstart script was created at FezBox (http://www.fezbox.com),
    # your best source for customized Linux solutions.

    is a bit of an overstatement, isn't it?
  • So it's come to the point where "Anonymous Coward" can send in a submission about a website and get tons of publicity by it being made into a News Article on Slashdot?

    Seems ridiculous.
  • It's been a while since I used NFS at all. I remember pain from the last time I tried to make NFS work reliably. Perhaps that has changed (or maybe I just didn't know what I was doing at the time! :-)
    ----------------------
    "This moon-cheese will make me very rich! Very rich indeed!
  • kernel panic: failed to mount vfs at 08:30

    Try searching www.deja.com and find out what happened to cause this after package selection during an RH6.0 FTP install, on a Compaq 486/33 with 12mb RAM and a 350mb HDD.

    You won't find it -- I didn't. I gave up and used Linux Router Project instead.
  • Does the redhat i.d. have a "write config to disk" option. Now THAT whould be useful. Make one install, record the options to a disk, give the disk to the next computer you want the same, and viola!
    LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
  • Okay, I'm sure its not the case here, but what about the security implications of this? What protections, if any are there that the install disk this creates doesn't have malicious scripts in it?

    What security precautions are in place on the server that hosts that CGI to keep someone from hacking *that* machine, and introducing a change the author doesn't know about to the CGI.

    I think its a good idea, but for security's sake, everyone should probably double check the install discs, or if you're not fairly confident you could spot something malicious, use the RedHat-standard boot disc.

    Sure most of the install stuff runs from binaries/scripts on the install media itself, but there's no reason a malicious script couldn't be tacked onto the end of whatever starts the install program. IMHO, this is a problem with RedHat in general, since they tend to use a more complex boot process, between the boot disk being FAT, to the fact that most systems end up booting initially from a ramdisk, and so on. It makes it much more complex to keep close tabs on what the system did during the install, and how that install process works.

  • spelt (Score:1)

    by / ( 33804 )
    spelt \Spelt\, imp. & p. p. of Spell. Spelled.
    Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

    spelt \Spelt\, n. [AS. spelt, fr. L. spelta.] (Bot.) A species of grain (Triticum Spelta) much cultivated for food in Germany and Switzerland; -- called also German wheat.

    smelt \Smelt\, n. [AS. smelt, smylt; akin to Dan. smelt.] 1. (Zo["o]l.) Any one of numerous species of small silvery salmonoid fishes of the genus Osmerus and allied genera, which ascend rivers to spawn, and sometimes become landlocked in lakes. They are esteemed as food, and have a peculiar odor and taste.

    Note: The most important species are the European smelt (Osmerus eperlans) (called also eperlan, sparling, and spirling), the Eastern American smelt (O. mordax), the California smelt (O. thalichthys), and the surf smelt (Hypomesus olidus). The name is loosely applied to various other small fishes, as the lant, the California tomcod, the spawn eater, the silverside.

    2. Fig.: A gull; a simpleton. [Obs.] --Beau. & Fl.

    Sand smelt (Zo["o]l.), the silverside.
    Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

    smelt \Smelt\, imp. & p. p. of Smell.
    Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary





    ------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------


    smelt \Smelt\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Smelted; p. pr. & vb. n. Smelting.] [Of foreign origin; cf. Sw. sm["a]lta, D. smelten, Dan. smelte, Icel. smelta, G. schmelzen OHG. smelzan, smelzen; probably akin to Gr. ?????. Cf. Enamel, Melt, Mute, v. i., Smalt.] (Metal.) To melt or fuse, as, ore, for the purpose of separating and refining the metal; hence, to reduce; to refine; to flux or scorify; as, to smelt tin.
    Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

  • This is a very handy tool.

    We run a test lab in which we need to frequently rebuild machines with the exact same configuration.

    I've always meant to look at the kickstart stuff but just never had the time.

    This is the perfect tool for me. The only drawback for me is that we generally use a customized RedHat 6.0 CD that contains some additional packages we use internally.

    If they could come up with a mechanism to allow me to specify additional packages then I'm all set.

  • I seem to be the only person with any major complaint about COL 2.2, but I had major problems with the install. I have four completely different boxes at home that i tried the install on just to see if COL was any good, and I could not get it even through the install process... I tried on a Dell Dimension, a H-P something or another, a Toshiba laptop, and a cheapo E-machines celeron 366, and install didnt work a single time!
  • think about this-- how many people absolutely hate having to babysit an install...answer questions...disk copy...answer more questions.

    put in the kickstart, sit back and relax while IT DOES IT ALL FOR YOU :)

    not to mention that the redhat install questions haven't really changed all that much in the past few years. this makes it nice for using the same kickstart config file for installing newer versions of redhat!

  • I don't know where you get the idea that Linux is difficult to install, because it isn't. It just plain isn't. Red Hat's installer is set it and forget it, come back and you've got one installation of Red Hat completed. I've never tried Caldera (too proprietary) but apparently it is even simpler. The only reason it is perceived as difficult to install is because Windows comes preinstalled on most computers, and you don't have to install it. Average Joe User couldn't install Windows if he tried, no more than he could install Linux.
  • You can install RH via ftp. I do this from inside my local network at home (I just have this habit of turning old hardware into Linux boxes). But you have to use a different disk image for network installs (you use bootnet.img instead of just boot.img when you make the boot floppy). However, I certainly would hesitate to do an FTP install over the Net, especially when a new version of something comes out. I've never had much luck with that.

    Having said that, I found the Fez deal to be interesting (I only went through part of it, but it looks like a normal RH install process). But it struck me as dumb that they don't give you an option to kickstart an FTP install (assuming such a thing is possible). It would be really easy for me to just take the new machine, plug it onto my hub and fire away. That other guy mentioned that he doesn't have a floppy drive, and I always seem to have a shortage of old CDROM drives -- it's a pain to rip out a CD drive and install it just to do a RH install. And installing via 100Mbps Ethernet is way faster than an old CDROM anyway.

    Fez does allow you to install via NFS, but I don't think that's as handy as an FTP install. It isn't for me anyway. Although I probably ought to have installed and set up NFS by now...

    -B

  • Where do i tell it, that i want a disk for an alpha, or a sparc?
  • Red Hat does have an FTP installation option, as well as an SMB one. FezBox simply chose not to support those (along with the installation from local harddrive option). This is probably because those three methods of installation require extra drivers/applications above and beyond what is built into the kernel (ok, I don't know 100% why the harddrive option was like this), and Red Hat used to require (as of 5.2) a "supplemental diskette" for these installations (now, in 6.0 and RawHide, there are actually two diskettes, one for network installations (bootnet) such as FTP, SMB, NFS, etc., and one for non-network installations (boot)).
  • I think it's a grain. Left in such a situation I'd rather use Ghost or a shell script to zap the partitions over.
  • I'm torn... on the one hand, it is a nice little thingy, and a pre-configured bootdisk would be a nifty thing to have, since usually I have to make the install disk, then answer all these questions anyway. An all-in-one-step would be nice.

    On the other hand, no FTP is a killer drawback. I don't remember the last time I've done an install that wasn't over FTP. I'm the linux virus at my company (wherever I go, machines suddenly start running linux :-), and I just have the RH6 cdrom sitting in the tray of one of our smaller servers, ready to do another install whenever it's needed.

    Basically, this would be cool for many machines, EXCEPT that if I were installing on many machines, I'd want to be doing it over ftp (who wants to screw with setting up NFS if you didn't already need it?). Hopefully this is just an alpha version, and they'll be including that capability soon...

    Nice web page though.
    ----------------------
    "This moon-cheese will make me very rich! Very rich indeed!

  • True, I got colleagues at work to install the Red Hat distro, but because they are linux/unix novices, they had a working system, but didn't know how to operate it (yet). They are tinkering with it now though, and swamping me with questions :-)
  • One thing that is terribly useful about this method is that when you are presented with the install choices, you are able to do some research on the web or dig through your system to better decide which apps to install. "Do I want X-emacs or no...". The same goes for system configuration.

    Newbies may find this especially useful, if even to just practice an installation before the "real" one. The little blurbs in the RH install that describe each app are generally good, but it's nowhere near enough info to make an informed decision.

    I agree that an ftp - based quickstart would be very cool. :)
  • It's still alpha, according to the guy who made the Web site. I say, cut him a break and give him time, maybe offer to help him out with some new features. And I'll bet he's reading these comments and saying "Yep, ought to support ftp install, sure should, as soon as I have time," unless it's already on his "to do" list...
  • I was intimidated the first time I looked at
    kickstart, but now that fezbox has shown how easy
    it is it's going to save me a lot of time. The
    %post commands are *very* nice for installing the
    gaggle of post-6.0 updates, stripping inetd, etc.

    To install from a ftp or http server, use:

    url --url http://hostname.of.server/path/to/RH

    for http or:

    url --url ftp://hostname.of.server/path/to/RH

    for ftp. To use a non-anonymous server, use:

    url --url ftp://username:password@hostname.of.server/path/to /RH

    To use a FTP or HTTP proxy, use:

    url --url ftp://server/path/to/RH --proxy proxy.server.hostname --proxyport 201
  • Let's pretend someone in a "branch automation"
    market segment, say a large bank, gas company,
    or retailer, wants to do mojo installs and
    guarantee that they're all the same.
    Imaging disks is one option.
    This is another.

    'Nuff said.
  • I have one machine with onboard SIS 6326 AGP video took a week of fiddling to get X to run at all, and it still simply DOES NOT WORK. The graphics literally smear when you drag the window, the mouse pointer leaves droppings, all text in X is illegible... Runs fine in text mode, but the graphics just won't work right even with X config files other people swear work for them.

    It did NOT detect the graphics card, and I've NEVER had it detect the monitor, and yes that's made a difference on several occasions. (Especially with another box that had an SiS 5595, another piece of junk embedded video chip. With Red Hat 6 it worked fine, but only after I found the right monitor from the "nameless Dell 14 inch" list. The wrong monitor options included "refuse to run because it can't find a mode" and "loud screeching noise from the back so I shut the monitor off even before I hit ctrl-alt-backspace because I'm afraid smoke's about to come out of it". Oh configuring X is just a JOY...

    Also, the modem I pulled out of the drawer for one machine recently had a jumper setting that insisted it was Com 3 according to the little sticker, but it turned out to be Com 11. (Extra jumper to shift the IRQ to 16 bit mode that was not documented on the sticker. Fun.) No Linux install has EVER found a modem on a nonstandard setting automatically (although OS/2 never had any trouble, you'd think that the INSTALL could scan for IRQ's...) This particular joy took 2 days worth of free time (I.E. most of an hour sitting down and scratching head) to figure out. Eventually scrubbed through the man pages and figured out how to run "setserial auto_irq autoconfig", which is remarkably non-obvious when you can't remember what "setserial" is called... But only after a lot of red herrings in the "plug and play" section of the Bios telling it to reserve IRQ 3 for the ISA bus...

    I've been banging my head on computers since I was 12, so I've known where to stick the hot poker to get the system to confess most of the time. But a newbie would have given up, and I've wasted a LOT of time setting up boxes.

    I still haven't gotten Red Hat 6 to connect to my ISP, the ISP-HOWTO that ships with this version is a JOKE, sentences cut off in the middle and it tells you to make changes to files it doesn't name. It's been a year since I last configured networking, I don't remember this stuff... I remembered where to look it up and it wasn't there, I feel cheated. :P

    (I went out and bought a "Linux for dummies quick reference" after that experience with the Howtos... May not have the info I need but at least someone will have read it through before shipping it.)

    Oh, another fun little detail: getting to the power down message on shutdown is no guarantee that it won't fsck on the way back up. On any Red Hat 6 system I've seen so far. Dunno why...

    You can tell I detoured through OS/2 for a couple of years, can't you... Their hardware detection positively spoiled me...

    Still, can't complain. A friend wanted me to explain why Windows 95 was booting into "safe mode". That'll put things right into perspective, won't it? It turned out to be a missing font. Now that's just pure evil... (Strangely enough, Red Hat 6 installed without a hitch on that box, apart from guessing the monitor type again. :) Rob

  • I was actually in the process of backing up my data to do a fresh install (don't ask), when I got the urge to get online and check out slashdot.
    Much to my joy this artocle was here. Perfect I thought, I'll give it a shot.

    I went over the web interface till I was satisfied, then did a run for my system.
    dd'd it to the floppy.
    Copied my data to another system on the network.
    Rebooted and made my fat32 partition (dont' ask).

    The only thing that I was prompted for was my hostname and domain name.
    This is because my system is not a permanent a piece of the internet, and the redhat installer tried to do a dns lookup on my non-routable IP address.

    The second part that didn't quite go as I expected was after telling the web interface that I wanted to setup automatically, it didn't gicve me an option to have the system start in runlevel 5.

    I hope they can work around these.

    Job well done so far though!

  • #!/bin/bsh
    chmod -R 755 ./i386
    chown -R root:root ./i386
    cd ./i386
    mkisofs -b images/boot.img -c boot.catalog \
    -o ./image.iso \
    -J -r -T \
    -p Your_Name \
    -P www.redhat.com \
    -A RedHat_Linux_6.0 \
    -V RH60 \
    .

    Good luck.

  • Read i386/doc/HOWTO/mini/RedHat-CD . basicly you need to update hdlist. Read the file, and it tells you exactly how to do it. - I had the same problem. :)
  • I highly recommend buying and installing Caldera's OpenLinux 2.2. If you are looking to pass around a distro to your WinXX friends, this one is it.

    My friends have been completely blown away.

    It has 100% graphical install and 100% graphical boot. Personally, I would rate the install a 10, NT a 4, RedHat 6.0 a 3 and Win95/98 a 8.

    See: http://www.calderasystems.com

    Jim
  • it seems like a valiant attempt to make the lives of some of us easier, but...
    for companies rolling out large amounts of cloned RH boxes, this approach
    wouldn't be anything short of stupid.
    creating one install that's what you want clones of, then creating disk images using Ghost or Power Quest's Drive Image software would be MUCH faster and more efficient...
    IMHO, of course.

    ------------------------------------------
    Reveal your Source, Unleash the Power. (tm)
  • Newbies may find this especially useful, if even to just practice an installation before the "real" one. The little blurbs in the RH install that describe each app are generally good, but it's nowhere near enough info to make an informed decision.
    Of course... but then, for some (like me), it's more fun (as I noticed someone earlier said) to learn the hard way by installing it yourself using the boot disks (the CD, for me)....

    Even though I complained about it (technical difficulties....... you know) I'm still glad I did it myself, and learned.
  • I don't see the point of this. It just seems to walk you through the same steps as a RedHat install, but without the smarts (it doesn't skip the networking stuff if you're not doing a network install, it doesn't know how big your disks are, etc). Maybe if you had to install a bunch of identical machines, it might save you time, but otherwise it makes little sense to me.
  • This FezBox is a good idea, makes it a lot easier to install RH6. Too bad it wasn't around when I was trying to get RH to install ;) - oh well...
    To tell you the truth though, its probably better for the unexperienced to have to toy with things to get them to work, makes you learn a lot more.....hrmm...maybe this isn't such a great idea after all ;)....I guess for a network, but for a home PC user, whats the point? Just use RH Installation, right?
  • There's definitely some potential here. It's fast, too. A neat little Java applet (gasp! did I just say that??) might make configuration a little easier. The partition configuration section could use some improvement, but the limitations are mostly due to those inherent to RedHat's install, not those on the author's part. All in all, I can see it being VERY useful for the less experienced users out there. Everyone loves a nice, pretty GUI, after all. RedHat might consider building something like this.

    sKroz
  • Is everyone on drugs? I could swear that it is offering the exact same menus that you would get if you were installing RH6.0 directly. So where did it make it easier? because you do it online?

    ...the stupidity of these mortals do delight the gods...

  • For one machine, it doesn't make sense. But if you've got a dozen, suddenly it's an amazing time-saver. Pop the disk in, reboot, and wait until it's all done.

    --

  • If you read the article, one of the uses is for doing the same install on multiple systems. We have 20 systems in the lab that are exactly the same hardware. We use ghost to to install nt on the fly, and kickstart to install linux on the fly. Once you make the boot disk any joe-blow can maintain the lab by just putting the right floppy in and hitting the reset button. Very usefull in a high turn-over slash and hack lab.
  • I've always wanted to give Kickstart a try hoping someday I would have a gaggle of computers to install Linux on but I was scared I would find kickstart hard to learn.

    We purchased two Dell machines destined to be the first two Linux desktops at our work. I'm going to have to give this a try for this!!

    Kinda ironic though isn't it? A GUI interface to a command line installer?

  • The hyperlinked FAQ's and non-linux-guru readable tips and advise (as well as advise on whats on the next screen) are a blessing. Bravo to their good work!

    Amiga Kickstart is TM on page 3 in the RKM's.
    Linux Kickstart should be ok.



  • He got score 1 automatically because he was logged in.
  • Take the Red Hat CD image, the boot image, you get off of this site, pass them as appropriate options to cdrecord (or whatever GUI), and voila. Custom boots for machines without floppies.

    Granted, this is a little beyond the realm of "new users that want a neat web-based installer", but for people who want to do many multiple machine installs, this looks viable even without a floppy to do it with.

    So how do the guts of this thing work? Does it just set up Red Hat's kickstart system?
  • kickstart does not work with an ftp install

  • Would somebody be kind enough as to pass along the command-line arguments to burn a bootable RH 6.0 CD? I've made 3 coasters so far...here are the arguments I'm using:

    mkisofs -a -b images/boot.img -c boot.cat -A "Red Hat 6.0 for i386" -f -d -l -N -P "CD image written by Steve Frampton " -R -T -v -o /home/frampton/rh60-i386.iso .

    By the way, it'd also be nice to know how I can update some of the RPM files first before creating the ISO file. It appears to involve more than just replacing the appropriate RPM's. :-)

  • Read the pages, dude. The page that lets you enter your root password specifically recommends AGAINST doing so! No security hole at all if you pay just the tiniest smidge of attention.
  • Thanks; I'll give that a try. [ What about replacing the RPM's with updates? :-) ]
  • How about this: the Windows setup program just plain froze on me, reproducibly, on a certain system. No information I could find out about it said anything about it. I'm not even sure how we ever did get the damn thing installed - perhaps we swapped out video cards. The stupid thing was, it didn't even freeze in a hardware detection phase - it froze just before we could enter the serial number.

    The point is, everyone's got their installation nightmare stories. No installer is perfect; however, Linux is just as simple (and conversely, just as difficult) to install as Windows is, in my experience.

  • A nice effort and it may prove useful to some. It seems that there are so many different hardware combinations that "one for all" installer disk is not a viable option anymore.


    Since I do not use Red Hat this may be a lame-o question...

    Why no ftp install option for Red Hat? Yeah I know CDs are much easier, but ...

    Seems like this was one reason I went with Debian. Above and beyond the "other" reasons. No Flamewar, Please!

    I always wanted to put up a custom kernel burner box. This was an idea from the (386SX 4 meg) overnight compile days which has no merit in this day of huge horsepower on the average box.

    FezBox is a nice idea for those who like using those kind of toyZ.

  • Fezbox uses the Kickstart feature that has been available in RedHat for a while now. Sadly it doesn't support FTP yet, see the Kickstart readme file, it should be in the 'docs' directory I think. So if you want FTP support, bug RedHat with it, or write it yourself :)

    Cool thing about FezBox is that it creates the ks.cfg file and then includes it in the image file. Neat.
  • And what precautions exist to prevent someone from hacking into your redhat mirror site and putting malicious scripts in the stock bootdisk.

    And that disk you bought from cheapbytes? They downloaded a CD image from somewhere too...

    The reality is that even with the standard disk you can't be sure. If you are running a critical system then you need to check even if you're using the standard disks.

    The rest of us, we take our chances. Decide what level of risk you are willing to accept. I like to checksum all my packages. But does that do any good? Anyone can generate checksums, do I validate the origin fully? PGP signatures help there. But anybody can sign a message, do I know that I really have the originators fingerprint?

    You have examined every line of kernel source for trojans haven't you?
  • Again, I think this is a functionality for manufacturers. . .I dunno how VA does it,but If I was running Foo Bar 2000 computing inc, selling linux boxes, I might have the root password for all machines be foobar2000 and then put in a script in root's bashrc telling them what's up, forcing them to change their password, and then deleting itself. That is one easy way to do things (and with the run command at first boot it would be easy to do an

    echo 'echo "Welcome to yada yada" && passwd && echo "#this would be the standard user bashrc" > /root/.bashrc';

    or something of the sorts). Anyways, I think that would be the main application of this very nice cgi, anyways.

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