Quote:
Originally Posted by bartgymnast
The page from Alien Bob describes to get started with a remote server where you can easily install multiple slackware servers from.
However you still need to be physically at the server.
|
There is a way to make the installer launch a SSH server so that you can login to the machine that is ready to be installed. This is still not an unattended install but at least you do not need to be physically present at the console to start the setup.
For this to happen, the installer must know the answer to a few questions it would usually ask you during boot: (1) the keyboard layout and (2) your network card configuration. If both are known, then the card can be configured with an IP address and a SSH server will be launched in the installer to which you can do a remote login as root (no password).
Then you can remotely start setup (after having run the command ". /etc/profile" - watch the dot - to correctly initialize the environment or else the setup will not be found).
Suppose your keyboard layout is "us", your network interface is called "eth0" and you have a DHCP server in your network. Then, all you need is a "pxelinux.cfg/default" file where the following string is added to the "append" line for your bootkernel:
Code:
kbd=us nic=auto:eth0:dhcp
If instead, you want to use a static IP address of 192.168.0.11/255.255.255.0 (i.e. a netmask of 24 bits) the added string becomes
Code:
kbd=us nic=auto:eth0:static:192.168.0.11:24
If you don't want to use udev but want to determine yourself what module to load then this would be the appended string (I also added a default gateway of 192.168.0.254 to the mix):
Code:
noudev kbd=us nic=e1000:eth0:static:192.168.0.11:24:192.168.0.254
The generic notation for the kbd= and nic= parameters is:
Code:
kbd=<keyboard_layout>
nic=<driver>:<interface>:<dhcp|static>[:ipaddr:netmask[:gateway]]
If your installer uses UDEV (the installer of Slackware 13.0 uses udev by default, earlier versions of Slackware did not have udev in the installer) then the "<driver>" string can be "auto". Without the use of udev, the "<driver>" must be an actual kernel module for your card, like "e1000" in my example above.
Eric