Using HP-UX to build Linux Servers...

[Lee Harris_5]

Hi all,

I've been playing around with building Linux machines automatically via pxe and kickstart. This seems to be working OK, using a Linux build server. However, I want to try doing this using a HP-UX box as the build server. I know kickstart works OK over NFS from a HP-UX box, but I need to try and configure bootp to do the dhcp / tftp bit. Does anyone know of any good docs in this area?

Many Thanks - Lee

[Court Campbell]

I've never had to do this but I hope these help:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/s1-kickstart2-putkickstarthere.html

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-91063/ch03.html?btnPrev=%AB%A0prev

[rick jones]

bootp/dhcp/tftp are pretty much the same regardless of the OS, so yes, it should be possible to use them on an HP-UX system.

[dirk dierickx]

why would you want to do this exactly? if your current solution is working fine why make life harder on yourself?

[Lee Harris_5]

Thanks for the replies. Dirk, in answer to your question, the solution is intended to be put to use in our Disaster Recovery environment, where currently we don't have a Linux server. We've just had a HP Ignite-UX server installed at this location, and rather than have to buy another server and try and find rack space for it I wanted to see if I could get all of the services (Ignite, Kickstart, DHCP/TFTP/PXE etc) co-located on one HP-UX machine.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

Court's HP-UX document was good, but his RHL document was rather old (RedHat 7.3!).

This is a current RHEL4 document about configuring PXE boot:
https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s1-netboot-pxe-config.html

And this is about Kickstart in general:
https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/ch-redhat-config-kickstart.html

Apparently you'll need:

-a bootp/DHCP server to provide the initial network parameters and boot data location to the PXE boot firmware (and to the OS, if you so desire)

-a TFTP server to provide the initial boot files

-some server that can be pointed to with an URL, to fetch the Kickstart files from (a HTTP or FTP server probably?). This is because the DHCP server can point to one file only, and for PXE to work, it must point to the PXE boot file.

-a NFS share for installation source

Certainly all of this can be implemented in a single HP-UX server, and I don't see why that HP-UX server could not be an Ignite server for the HP-UX hosts at the same time.

However, it might be easier if you can maintain a "native" Linux setup somewhere, so that you can use the Linux distribution's tools to generate the PXE boot files, Kickstart files and any other necessary files. Then you'll just have to copy them over to the HP-UX system as needed.

The HP-UX bootpd understands both bootp and DHCP protocols, so that won't be a problem. However, its configuration syntax is different from RedHat Linux's standard dhcpd, so you'll need to rewrite the HP-UX bootpd configuration file manually.

The HP-UX bootpd probably cannot check for the correct vendor-class-identifier string, as described for Linux dhcpd here:
https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s1-netboot-dhcp.html

The intent of this configuration is to provide the name of the PXE boot file only when the actual PXE boot firmware is doing the DHCP query. However, providing the name of the boot file along with every DHCP answer for the host should not cause any problems.

MK

[rick jones]

Of course, before too long, HP Virtual Machines will support a Linux guest, so if your DR setup is Itanium you could simply boot a Linux under the virtual machine support whenever you needed to do the Linux installs

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Hi,

Redhat's cobbler utility is for kickstarting large numbers of linux hosts, both native or inside xen.
It is -of course- intended to run on linux, BUT it will probably run on HP-UX using the cobbler_byname extension, which was written by someone using it on solaris (all python)

a)
http://cobbler.et.redhat.com/


b)
http://wiki.xdroop.com/space/RedHat/kickstart/Cobbler/cobbler_byname