Network install FC7

[John Summerfield]

Kam Leo wrote:
> On 11/1/07, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com> wrote:
>> I want to install FC8 on a machine without a DVD, but with a CD drive. I
>> decided the easy way is to do a network install, and put the DVD image
>> on my file server. However, after trying the install command on both the
>> rescue CD and the boot.iso from the DVD, and exporting the data by both
>> NFS and HTTP, I'm beginning to think that there is a serious omission in
>> the "quick and easy" guide. The install pulls the stage2 file off the
>> server and then says it can't pull the file off the server and invites
>> reconfiguration. I can most definitely pull the file with correct md5sum
>> using either protocol.
>>
>> Looking at te HTTP access in the httpd/access log, it looks af if the
>> install looks first in the "disk1" directory, then directly in images,
>> but it finds the file just fine.
>>
>> One possible problem, this is an Athlon processor (K7) and I can find
>> distributions for i686, x86_64, and pcc, but none for i386 (the RPMs say
>> i686 in the 386 directory), or for Athlon. Because FC8 works, I assume
>> this is configuration rather than needing a different build.
>>
>> Is there a simple trick or a pointer to valid instructions? I can
>> install FC8 on the machine just fine, but pulling a pre-release
>> distribution over a slow (4Mbit) network is not what I want other than a
>> proof of concept.
>>
>>
>> --
>> bill davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
>> CTO TMR Associates, Inc
>> Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979
> 
> For NFS install you only need to provide access to the iso file. The
> information here,  http://fedoranews.org/dowen/nfsinstall , is a
> little dated but the concepts should hold.
> 
I had a discussion about the op's question on the Scientific Linux list. 
My conclusion is that http (and ftp) installs fro dvd images are broken 
with the advent of yum in anaconda, in FC6, RHEL5 and later.

The problem's with the "media" URLs in the repo, they look to me an over 
complicated way of ensuring the correct CD is mounted.

The workaround's to unpack (or mount -o loop) the ISO, and create a repo 
a directory back, in rw space. I've not tried it, but I think it would work.

I got fairly disgusted about then, esp as the README that used to 
describe the procedure to convert CD images to network install image 
went missing.

I like http installs, they're more flexible than nfs and I get nice logs 
recording what files were used. And, if I wish, I can simply configure 
my (virtual) Apache server to proxy someone's mirror and install from 
there, caching the bits I actually want.



-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu  Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu
-- Advice
http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

Please do not reply off-list