Setting up a new release of Solaris for autoinstalling

1) Pick a filesystem to hold the new OS.  Within this filesystem, mkdir
a directory to hold the OS, like "Solaris-8-02-2004".

2) Symlink from this new directory to /auto_install.  All external
references to the OSes should go through this directory of symlinks.
Call this /auto_install/$OS (just notation, don't actually name it that :)

3) mkdir /auto_install/$OS/auto_install

4) mkdir /auto_install/$OS/auto_install_config

5) cp the auto_install_config files from the immediately previous release
of Solaris into your new auto_install_config directory.  You may want
to do this with cp -r or a tar pipeline

6) for each cdrom to install (Usually "software 1" and "software 2") :

6 I) You have four options for mounting a cdrom onto autoinst:

6 I a) Mount the cdrom in a cdrom drive physically attached to autoinst
6 I b) Mount the cdrom on some other system, then NFS export that to
autoinst and
         NFS mount it onto autoinst
6 I c) Loopback mount the iso image on a linux system, and NFS export
that to autoinst,
         NFS mount it onto autoinst.  This has the advantage of not
         requiring the burning of
         a physical cdrom
6 I d) Mount the cdrom on some other system, and copy all the data to autoinst

6 II) cd /mnt/cdrom/Solaris_8/Tools (or similar)

6 III) On the first disk::
env PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin ./setup_install_server
/auto_install/$OS/auto_install

6 III b) On subsequent disk(s):
env PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin ./add_to_install_server
/auto_install/Solaris-10-01-2006

7) See also https://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/bpgetfile-workaround.html
This is often required when installing on subnets other than that which
the autoinstall server is on.

8) Also, there may be a snippet of code like this in ../sbin/rcS:

      # get the server's netmask
      if [ -x /sbin/get_netmask ]; then
         netmask=`/sbin/get_netmask $SERVER_IPADDR 2>/dev/null`
         if [ -n "$netmask" ]; then
            /sbin/ifconfig -a netmask 0x${netmask}  >/dev/null 2>&1
         fi
      fi

...comment it out!  It tries to make things better, but instead make
them worse.  :)

9) You might want to set up stel too:
https://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/SunOS-stel.html
This allows folks to remotely restart stuck installs, watch an install's
progress, and so on.

Solaris-10-03-2005 addendum, 2005-02-17:

I managed to loopback mount both partitions in the first Solaris 10
03/2005 CD-ROM.  Please see my "solaris notes" or "Fedora Core 3"
notes for specifics.  Flies in the ointment: the first partition NFS
exported fine, but gave permission errors until I made a copy of it onto
a local disk and exported that.  The second partition, which I mounted
by computing an offset and specifying it with -o offset=, wouldn't NFS
export, so I made a copy of it and exported that right off the bat.

Command to start the config using the first CD was:
autoinst-root> ./setup_install_server -t /mnt/usr
/auto_install/Solaris-10-03-2005/auto_install

For the 2nd CD image, I'm trying the direct loopback mount again...

This is a good way of making sure that the solaris directories on
autoinst actually match the version of solaris that's loaded under
those directories:

grep --binary-file=text
. /auto_install/*/auto_install/*/Product/SUNWsolnm/reloc/etc/release

A document about loopback mounting individual partitions from a disk
(and cd?) image:

http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?DiskImage

Bothersomely hard to find URL, now that Solaris 10 is available:

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/9/

2005-12-20

Solaris 9 9/05 corresponds to sol-9-u8*

Downloading Installation, Software 1 and Software 2 CD's.  I'm skipping
the Languages CD.

It seems like downloading a single DVD image should be simpler, especially
given how painful Sun makes downloading -free- stuff, but for some reason
the DVD version of Solaris 9 9/05 has -more- images, not less.

Nothing would download in the version of Firefox that comes with Fedora
Core 4 right now - it had no filename, no file type...  Not even the
Download Manager software would download - and why on earth would
the download manager, which is in java, be locked up in a bunch of
platform-specific binaries?  Normally I'd just "copy link location", cd
to where I want the download, and paste the URL to a lukemftp or wget.
But no.  Also, the server response is dog slow.

Anyway, I'm using Mozilla on Solaris 8 to do the downloads, and that
seems to be working fine.

I'm winding up ignoring the install CD - it doesn't seem important.

Working on Software 1 and Software 2 now - loop back mounting them on
Fedora Core 4.

Tar pipelined them to a pair of regular directory hierarchies - IE,
not in a loopback mount.  The NFS export was failing when I tried to
use the loopback mounts.  It used to export and mount without errors,
but then actually -using- it would have subtle problems (probably FC3).

Nice!  No weird unnessary-slice-requirement anymore.  :)  At least that
much of the setup has improved.  :)

2005-12-21 and 22

Nope, there's definitely still an unnecessary-slice-requirement.  Bummer.

Anyway, I burned two copies of Software 1, and both showed up on autoinst
as a bunch of empty partitions.  So I got Tri to burn one, and it had
the same problem.

Then I downloaded another copy of Software 1, and compared the two.
They were unfortunately identical.

I'm going to try one of the same CD's in another CDROM drive next

2006-01-04

I just completed copying the first and second Solaris 9 09/2005 CD's from
tactical (It has a faster CD drive than bingy, and runs Solaris unlike
seki and such) over to autoinst.  Each transfer took quite a while,
as the transfer rate was about 200 Kilobits/second.

Anyway, I've just fired up a setup_install_server for the first disk...

And it appears to have completed pretty quickly, without error.

So now I'm doing:
./add_to_install_server /auto_install/$OS/auto_install

It bothers me that it says "Copying the Early Access products...",
but whatever.

The add_to_install_server also appears to have completed without error.

Now I'm doing a recursive grep for bpgetfile...

I've attempted to "fix" all the bpgetfile's

Then I commented out the netmask "fixing" code in rcS

Now I'm setup-autoinst'ing bingy for Solaris 9 09/2005

And finally, I'm starting up a test install...  Dang, bingy's down,
and I'm remote so no testing with bingy tonight.

Maybe jesus.nac...

OK, now I have a jesus.nac test install going.  I also backed up all of
jesus to seki, incrementally - so it took hardly any time at all.