Preface
-------

This software is intended to be used with TCS, the Testbed Control System.
It can be used as a generalized "jumpstart" or "kickstart" network-based
installation system, but some work would be needed to remove the
TCS-specific components.  This document presumes that you are using tcsboot
with TCS.

Before using tcsboot, you will need an understanding of the mechanism for
running Linux diskless.  There are serious network ramifications to
deploying netbooting for Linux, as well as an extremely limited
troubleshooting environment inside the netboot.


Building the Software
-------- --- --------

Look at tcsboot.h and make sure that the values there are correct for your
installation of TCS.  tcsboot is currently only tested under Linux
(specifically, Fedora Core 3 and Fedora 7).   You ought to disable "SYN
cookies" (which are on by default in Fedora 7).

You do not need to configure DHCPD to run at system startup.  tcsboot will
start DHCPD automatically.  However, the initialization script provided by
Fedora (in both 3 and 7) failed for me during test, so I used the included
variant of the script.  Either

# cp init.d/dhcpd /etc/init.d

or

# patch -p0 < init.d/dhcpd.diff


Creating the Netboot Environment
-------- --- ------- -----------

You will need to set up an NFS root for the test nodes to use for
netbooting.  I created mine by installing Fedora Core 3 onto a system,
and customized it as desired (largely, just removing packages).  I chose to
place my NFS root environment in /export/miniroot on the TCS control node.
If you use my system initialization scripts (under etc/), then you will not
need a copy of anything in /var, /tmp, or /boot.

Our control network is 192.168.3.0/24.  Therefore, I used these options to
NFS-export /export/miniroot:

192.168.3.0/24(ro,insecure,async,no_root_squash)

I copied the data over with:

rsync -vrRlxHpogDtSP --exclude=lost+found --exclude=.autofsck
--exclude=/tmp/* --exclude=Pub_performers/ --delete-excluded --progress
--stats --rsh=ssh

I had installed FC3 into a single partition, to make copying simpler.

You do not need to boot FC3 when netbooting, but my scripts are only tested
under FC3 and F7.


# cp system-config-files/dhcpd.conf /etc
# cp system-config-files/rsyncd.conf /etc

chkconfig --levels 2345 dhcpd on
chkconfig rsync on

You do not want to run rsync from xinetd.

Currently, the system presumes that /boot will be on its own partition.

You may need to change the SELinux policy on the control node.
Although DHCP, SNMP, NTP, RPC, and so on all appear to work well on our
systems here, disabling SELinux will reduce spurious log messages.


NB: root_base_1 does not follow the "common" semantics of using symlinks.
Specifically, rsync does NOT dereference symlinks, and in fact, r_b_1 is
mounted via NFS, which will ruin any symlinks above the test node's home in
the scenario.


Licensing
---------

tcbsoot - programs for netbooting systems and reliably deploying software
Copyright (C) 2005, 2008  Ben Stern, Fortian Inc.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for
more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51
Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.


$Id: README,v 1.4 2009/02/27 16:11:44 bstern Exp $