SIS - The System Installation Suite

The System Installation Suite (SIS) is a tool for remotely installing Linux on groups of machines over a network.

The following steps are required for installation: Install Linux on the install server from CDs or some other method Install SystemInstaller and its prerequisites on the server. The prereqs are: systemimager-server systemimager-common perl-AppConfig libdbdcsv perl-DBI perl-Tk (if using systeminstaller-x11) You can use http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sisuite/sis-installer.pl to download and install the SIS packages. Copy your desired distribution's package files to a directory on the server (default is /tftpboot/rpms). Also copy systemconfigurator and perl-AppConfig files to this directory. Create your image using one of these methods: tksis, buildimage, or mksiimage. Package list files can be found in /usr/share/systeminstaller/distinfo/. See mksiimage man page for package file format if creating your own. Make sure that systemconfigurator and perl-AppConfig are listed in the file. Create your disk partition table using one of these methods: tksis, buildimage, or mksidisk. A sample disk partition file can be found in /usr/share/doc/systeminstaller-[version]/disktable. See mksidisk man page for disk partition file format if creating your own. At this point, run mkautoinstallscript if you have been using the mk* commands. Create your client machines using one of these methods: tksis, buildimage, or mksirange. If you need to use network boot, or need to have static dhcpd, collect and set the MAC address for your machines using mksimachine --Update Run mkdhcpconf --outfile /etc/dhcpd.conf +other options to create the dhcpd.conf file. Touch /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases to enable dhcpd. Restart the dhcpd, xinetd and systemimager services. Set up remote booting using either mkautoinstalldiskette, mkautoinstallcd, or mkbootserver (requires pxe package from your distro). An alternate way of setting up the network boot server requires the syslinux package (available from your distro or syslinux.org): a. Copy /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 as /tftpboot/pxelinux.bin b. Create directory /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg c. Copy /etc/systemimager/pxelinux.cfg/default to /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg d. Copy kernel and initrd.img from /usr/share/systemimager/boot/i386/standard to /tftpboot (requires the systemimager-i386boot-standard package). Boot the remote machines using whichever method you set up in the previous step. If network booting, remember to set the bios start option of your machines accordingly.

  Michael Chase-Salerno <mchasal@users.sf.net>

buildimage, tksis, mksirange, mksimachine, mksiimage, mksidisk, perl