Autoinstallation of Suse Enterprise Linux Standard Server 8
 

Hi Folks,
I work for a enterprise software development company and I
setup hands-off network installations for all our platforms.
This includes using PXE for booting, and jumpstart (Solaris) or kickstart
(redhat/fedora) for installing.

The problem is that I have recently added Suse standard server
8 to our lab. I searched the net and found several references
to using autoyast=.../autoinst.xml in my pxe config file, but I need to generate
an autoinst.xml file, which requires a few rpms that do not
seem to come with SUSE Standard Server 8.

I submitted a request to the support people at SUSE (standard server
has support), but haven't heard back yet.

I suppose I could install suse pro with the additional rpms, then
use "yast2 autoyast" to generate the autoinst.xml, but this seems
like a lot of work and I'm not sure the generated autoinst.xml would
be portable to the suse standard server distribution.

Anyone out there got some ideas?

don't rely on suse for help, its a nice package but the support is a joke.
I believe you can download all the suse stuff for free, its just the CDs you pay for.
derek.

Some are few minutes reading away from a solution ....
http://www.suse.de/~nashif/autoinstall/
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Network-In...O-5.html#ss5.1
Hope it helps. At least i did not find anything "complicated" or "unclear".

Sorry, I should have been clearer....

I *tried* to follow the steps in the URLs you have posted, however,
they call for installation of these three rpms:
* yast2-trans-autoinst
* yast2-config-autoinst
* yast2-module-autoinst

Those RPMS do not exist on the suse enterprise linux standard server installation
CDs. I know I could download them and install them, but I doubt that the autoinst.xml
file generated would work on the SUSE standard server.

Without these rpms, when I run "yast2 autoyast", I get an error saying thats unknown.

Hm. Now it depends on the SLES version You want to use:
The paragraph "Availability" from http://ventilator.netswarm.net/Linux.../147/paper.pdf states clearly:
------------
AutoYaST is available with recent SuSE products starting from SuSE Linux 8.0 and will be available with business products based on SLES 8.
Old products prior to SuSE Linux 8.0 and business products based on SLES 7 have an auto-installation system relying on YaST. A configuration management system is provided by Alice for these products.
------------
You can find instructions and samples for both variants (autoyast/yast2 and yast1/alice) within http://www.suse.de/~nashif/autoinstall/8.2/html/

I thought I should follow up with the solution. I finally got a response from the suse folks which essentially said that my support contract only covers *basic* installation support and that I should consider purchasing a premium support contract.... nice...

Anyway, here is what I did:
installed suse from CD, then:
***-remove old autoinst2-installation rpm
***-install:
***-./noarch/autoyast2-installation-2.6.41-50.noarch.rpm
***-./i586/mkisofs-1.11.a28-67.i586.rpm
***-./i586/alice-compat-0.21-122.i586.rpm
***-./i586/perl-XML-RegExp-0.03-332.i586.rpm
***-./i586/perl-XML-DOM-1.39-82.i586.rpm
***-./i586/perl-XML-Generator-0.91-151.i586.rpm
***-./i586/alice-compat-0.21-122.i586.rpm
***-./noarch/autoyast2-2.6.41-50.noarch.rpm
***-then run yast2 autoyast to create the autoinst.xml file

XML suse 10 - autoinst.xml loaded but rules.xml not loaded
 

Hi,

I having problem with autoinst.xml, it doesn't load rules.xml. I remaster SuSE 10 into a single cdrom. I need some of its code to be dynamic. Like disk detectiong and partitioning. Right now I about only automatically load and install using autoinst.xml.

Please help me out if your experience in it :)