[ale] Headless, Consoleless, DVDless, NetInstall? was: Fedora NetInstall via USB Drive

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 09:38 -0400, Richard Bronosky wrote:
> Okay, I'm pretty impressed with the level of expertise I've seen. I
> figure I might as well try this pipe dream out on y'all.

> I have a bunch of servers hosted with Peer1 "Managed*" Hosting.

	Details?  When you say "bunch of servers" do you mean a bunch of hard
iron or are these virtual systems on one of their hosting boxes?  You
own the boxes or they own the boxes.  Can you add your own hardware?

> They
> do not give console access, so installing my own OS, setting up LVM,
> etc. requires that I pay them to do it for me. Once I have them
> install said OS, I have full control over it, but only via SSH - no
> console.

	If you have multiple hard servers, can you have them install serial
adapters between them (null modem cables and/or usb adapters)?  I do
this to manage my remote systems.  Each system has a serial console
connected into a multiport serial to USB adapter and that then plugs
into a Cables Unlimited 4 port USB sharing device.  So I've got 4
servers which can take control of the serial console constellation and
run any of the other machines over a serial console.  Some of the
machines have serial capable BIOS and some don't. 

> It sounds to me like, as I add servers I ought to be able to
> take their bulky default LAMP stack they give for free. Drop a few
> things in carefully chosen places. Reboot.  Ideally, I'd like the
> install process to start sshd very early so that I can handle
> exceptions or install interactively. I [loosely] understand the
> kickstart concept, but since this is a server that I have no physical
> access to, I'd like SSH access early.

> Is this doable?

	Yes.  Doable.  For some value of "doable".  Depends on other
conditions.

	In the subject you said "DVDless".  You can't have them install a DVD /
CD for you?  All my remote servers have NST (Network Security Toolkit)
CD's installed that have been customized to chainload to the main hard
drive after a timeout.  They also have a serial console (recurse back to
earlier question) so I can interrupt the boot process from another
server and manage the machine booted off the run-live CD.

	Can the machines be etherbooted?  If they HAVE a bootp/tftp server on
that net already, that might be a problem.  If they don't, well...
There are good howtoo's out there for setting that up.

> * Managed = They try to reboot my server whenever they don't
> understand what I'm doing (Xen) with it.

	Why are you using Xen?  Running something "non-Linux" in a VM?  I use
OpenVZ for virtualization and have almost 3 dozen virtual machines
running on one particular host machine without freaking out the load
average.  The host machine runs nothing but routing and ssh.  I can
upgrade and reinstall all those virtual machines independently and the
only reboot comes if I have to upgrade the host kernel.

	My setup, I don't have access to real hard consoles, like an IP KVM
(which are outrageously expensive and not worth it).  But I manage to
run everything remotely just fine, including emergency management of the
machines and reinstallation when required.  Only time I head into their
NOC is when there's a hardware problem that needs I lay hands on (which
I can but apparently you can't).  That's very rare.

> .!# RichardBronosky #!.

	Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!

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