perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Mark Feit <>]

Zach Bare writes:

I have a number of dell servers geographically distributed throughout Pennsylvania which I need to re-image with the latest perfSONAR toolkit. To avoid having to physically visit each server I am looking to boot the toolkit installer remotely from the ISO hosted on another server on my network. 

Has anyone in the community had success in installing the toolkit in this fashion? I know technologies exist to network boot a server, but (a) I didn't know if the toolkit installer plays well with these technologies and (b) I'm not very familiar with the process of setting up a network boot.

(a)  As long as whatever mechanism you use to do it is transparent to the installer (i.e., the ISO appears mounted like a CD device would be), it should play just fine.

(b) That can be remedied.  :-)

My first thought would be to use the virtual media feature if your Dells have DRACs with the enterprise feature set enabled, but I’m not sure if it can be made to work when the OS on the machine is Linux.  You’d have to research that, but if it’s doable, that’s the path of least resistance.

For a more general solution, and going on the assumption that you have remote console access to your servers, I’d recommend that you look into a package called iPXE.  One of the things iPXE can do is attach an ISO via iSCSI or HTTP, so all you’d need to do is put it up on a server the remote machines can reach and you’re in business.  The commands to do it would be fairly straightforward:

set net0/ip 10.9.8.7

set net0/netmask 255.255.255.0

set net0/gateway 10.9.8.1

set dns 10.9.8.2

sanboot http://server.kinber.org/toolkit.iso

If there’s DHCP available, the four set commands can be removed and a single dhcp command put in their place.   Any HTTP server used to serve the ISO must support range requests.  The out-of-the-box Apache on most systems does, so it’s a good choice.

The hitch is that iPXE needs to be on a bootable medium, and it’s operationally better when separate from the disk in the machine.  This means you’d need to mail a USB stick out to all of your locations and ask someone to walk over to the machine and plug it in for you.  A treat tucked in the envelope with it makes an excellent bribe for would-be remote hands. :-)  Once it’s in there, set the BIOS to ignore it and boot it explicitly when you need to use it.  Since it’s a regular USB device, you’ll be able to update it remotely while the main OS is running.

HTH.  If I can find a few minutes today, I might try this out on a VM and will write up some instructions if it works.

—Mark