Auto Install Finally Working For Me!

Some of you may know, I've been struggling (and failing) to make auto install work for me. I've had challenges, because my network is not routable, and due to other issues (bugs!) in OpenSolaris Auto Install.

However, it seems that I've finally hit on a successful recipe. I want to record this here for others.

First, in order to use AI, you will need your installation server to be running a recent build of OpenSolaris. The release notes indicate b128 is sufficient. I just ran "pkg image-update" to update to build 131. If you fail to do this, there won't be a warning at all, its just your clients will simply not boot.

The next thing you'll need to do is download a full-repository and the AI image.

Unfortunately, there are not public versions of the full repo ISO file available that are "current". (No, I can't get you a copy, and no I don't know why they haven't posted a more recent update.) Hopefully this problem will be corrected soon.

Setting up the local repository can be done following these directions. (Note that you will have to change the paths to reflect your system. I stash ISO images in /data/isos, and install images under /data/install. These are separate ZFS filesystems.

# where do ISOs live, without leading /
ISODIR=data/isos
# where does the repo live, without leading /
REPO=data/install/os131_repo_full
# AI service name to use
NAME=os131_x86
# parent directory for installations, without leading /
INSTDIR=data/install
# port to use for install server
PORT=8181

mount -F hsfs -r /${ISODIR}/osol-repo-131-full.iso /mnt
zfs create -o compression=on ${REPO}
svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/inst_root=/${REPO}
svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/readonly=true
svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/port=${PORT}

You'll need to edit the ${REPO}/cfg_cache file, changing the origins entry to match your system. I used a value like this:

origins = http://192.168.128.11:8181

Then you'll want to use installadm to setup an initial boot service. Here's the recipe I used:

zfs create -o compression=on ${INSTDIR}/${NAME}
installadm create-service -n ${NAME} -s /${ISODIR}/osol-dev-131-ai-x86.iso /${INSTDIR}/${NAME}

Now you need to change the default manifest file. This is the tricky part, that IMO was not terribly well explained anywhere else.

cp /${NSTDIR}/${NAME}/auto_install/default.xml /tmp

Then edit default.xml file in /tmp, changing the value of "main_url" to point to your server. I used a value like this:

<main url="http://192.168.128.11:8181" publisher="opensolaris.org"/>

Then apply this manifest to the default manifest:

installadm add -m /tmp/default.xml -n ${NAME}

Finally, I did some tweaking in my DHCP configuration. I have a macro for each service name, that provides the defaults. For example, my "os131_x86" macro looks likes this:

Include pepper
BootFile os131_x86
GrubMenu menu.lst.os131_x86

My "pepper" macro (pepper is the name of my server) sets some shared defaults, but most especially it sets BootSrvA to the IP address of the server (192.168.128.11 in my case.)

Then I just configure individual addresses for which ever version of OpenSolaris (or SXCE) I want to install using the the correct configuration macro. (For SXCE there are very different DHCP options to use. Also the SPARC version of OpenSolaris uses different options as well.)