Slackware 12 Automate Installation

StratoNJ · 10-29-2007, 09:41 AM

Hi All,

I'm a noob looking to rollout Slack12 to about 15 machines. Once I have a clean install, is there a way to automate the install. All the boxes and network settings are the same. I'd like to create a script that would install our defaults. We install the full packages so the tagfiles wouldn't help me out too much. Is there a kickstart program or something like it for Slack12?

Thanks in advance,
J

onebuck · 10-30-2007, 07:43 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by StratoNJ

Hi All,

I'm a noob looking to rollout Slack12 to about 15 machines. Once I have a clean install, is there a way to automate the install. All the boxes and network settings are the same.

You could just clone one installation. You would still need to make some local changes on each machine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StratoNJ

I'd like to create a script that would install our defaults. We install the full packages so the tagfiles wouldn't help me out too much. Is there a kickstart program or something like it for Slack12?

Slackware®12_Janux_NET_NoBurn_Install would be an example of doing a no cd/burn install method that you could use to do a install. This could be modified to allow you installing from a usb stick or external drive to your machine(s).

You could clone one installation using 'dd'. Look at this LQ post, 'Learn The DD Command Revised'.

Another method would be to use a network install using NFS. This method has been covered many times on LQ, so a search will get you the necessary steps.

You could look at the 'usb-and-pxe-installers' as a means to do the NFS install.

Quote:

excerpt from README_USB.TXT;

Booting the Slackware installer from a USB stick
------------------------------------------------

The 'usbboot.img' file is a 24 MB small USB boot image that you can
use to boot into the Slackware setup program. The mini image does not
contain any installable Slackware package. In order to install Slackware
you will need a local NFS server or another Slackware package source like
a prepared local harddisk partition. This small image file works great,
especially when you can't or don't want to use CDROM media as the
carrier for the Slackware packages.
The image is transfered to a USB stick in a matter of seconds. Even the
oldest and tiniest of USB drives is well suited for this purpose.

The usual way of installing Slackware from a NFS server repository, is
to boot the Slackware CDROM, and run the ('pcmcia' and) 'network' script
that load the drivers for your network card. You need a working network
card before running setup and go through the installation procedure.
When you type 'pcmcia' and/or 'network', the Slackware installer would look
for the appropriate driver files on an available CDROM, and if no CDROM
is found it prompts you to insert floppy disks.

Now, with a boot from our USB stick we are assuming there is no CDROM
and no floppy drive available to us. So, this USB boot image contains
all the drivers you need and will not prompt you for additional 'floppies'.
A consequence of adding all the network and pcmcia drivers to the USB image
is that using a bootable USB stick is not a suitable method to install
Slackware on old PCs that are low on memory! The ramdisk will be more than
30 MB in size, and you will need RAM for your kernel as well.

Another method would be to use the PXE boot off the network as the install method. If you look at the README_PXE.TXT;

Quote:

excerpt from 'README_PXE.TXT';

When the time comes to install Slackware on your computer, you have a
limited number of options regarding the location of your Slackware
packages. Either you install them from the (un)official Slackware CDROM or
DVD, or you copy them to a pre-existing hard disk partition before starting
the installation procedure, or you fetch the packages from a NFS server.

The number of available options for booting your Slackware installer is
similarly limited: either you boot your computer from the bootable first
CDROM of the Slackware CD set, or from the DVD, or using a USB stick. There
is even loadlin, the DOS based Linux starter, but lets not concern ourselves
with the past today. Slackware 12.0 abandoned the floppy boot altogether.

What if your PC is lacking a CDROM drive and refuses to boot from a USB
stick? Brands of PCs are on the market today (ultra-portable laptops for
instance) that are unable to install Slackware the traditional way. However,
these machines are commonly equipped with network peripherals, like bluetooth,
wireless and wired network cards. How to solve this dilemma? Buy an external
CD drive?

Well, there is another way of booting your computer that the Slackware
installer supports. That is the 'network boot'. Network boot, or PXE boot,
requires support from your computers network card and BIOS.
Also, instead of installing packages from a Slackware CDROM set or DVD, you
will need a network server that can instruct your computer how to fetch those
packages from the network.

In this README, I will show you how to perform an installation that uses
the network as the carrier medium, with a server on the local network that
holds the boot kernel and the root filesystem (which contains the setup
program), and also has all the Slackware packages. This means, there is no
need for a floppy or CDROM drive.

I would suggest that you read the referenced files for all the content. As for your question about a holistic install script or 'kickstart' for multiple machine installs of Slackware 12, I'm not aware of any at this time.

reikyv · 10-31-2007, 05:25 AM

Hi, I am interested in this topic too.
I can use kickstart to install a RHEL from NFS, but haven't have time to play with the slackware style. Thinking to write a perl script to automate the installation process, :-p

onebuck · 10-31-2007, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reikyv

Hi, I am interested in this topic too.
I can use kickstart to install a RHEL from NFS, but haven't have time to play with the slackware style. Thinking to write a perl script to automate the installation process, :-p

Hi,

I'm not saying you can't automate a Slackware install but that it would be easier to use the 'usb-and-pxe-installers' method for multiple machines.

The network install would be reliable and without to much hassle.