netboot strategie

[Dominik Kasprzyk]

Maybe I'm unclear on the exact question you're asking so I'll answer the one I think you're asking, but I'd have thought that a better way to do a reinstall of a client is to set it to boot off the hard-disk first and then have netboot as the second boot device.  Then, one can tell a client to reinstall itself by erasing the master boot record with dd e.g.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

and then rebooting the node.  The client will always attempt to boot from local disk first if there's an installed Linux system including after a reinstall.  This method avoids going through the bootserver and also has the added advantge of reinstalling any clients on the network that eat their own hard-disks automatically.

If you have a blank or non-working system, then you should set the NIC as the first boot device but set it back afterwards.

Hope that was relevant

				Dominik

On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:10:23 +0200
Rudy Gevaert <rgevaert at elis.UGent.be> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm using netboot to install a system using FAI.  Now what are the
> best strategies to reboot the system.
> 
> I use 
> fai-chboot -IBv hostname
> 
> to install a client.  This works.  Then the install system disables
> that entrie, so on the next boot the client boots from the localdist.
> 
> But the documentation says that the first bootdevice should be the
> NIC, and the second the hard disk.  Thus when my client reboots after
> install it complains about not begin able to find the install kernel.
> 
> A way around the problem is set netboot to boot from localhost.
> 
> Am I missing anything here?  Or is this the way to do it?
> 
> Thank you in advance,
> 
> Rudy
>