SUMMARY: Network installation problems.

From: Stuart Pearlman - RDR (stuart@to.mobil.com)
Date: Thu Feb 23 1995 - 07:36:07 CST


I'd like to thank everyone who answered my original post:

    From: Casper Dik <casper@fwi.uva.nl>
    From: matt@uts.EDU.AU (Jas (Matthew K))
    From: rauthenberg@HHI.DE (Stefan Rauthenberg)
    From: tkevans@eplrx7.es.duPont.com (Tim Evans)

and anyone whose reply hasn't shown up yet.

The problem I was having with network installs was due to a bug in the
Solaris 2.3 network install procedure. When installing from hard disk
(as opposed to cd-rom), if the installation partition is exported
read/write w/ root access the installation program mistakenly creates
the hostname.le0 file on the network installation server's disk instead
of creating it on the client.

The solution is to export the installation partition readonly. I'm
still looking through the installation partition on the server to see
if I can figure out where it creates the hostname.le0 file, to see if
its something I can patch myself. Having to export the installation
partition readonly limits me if I want to put other non install related
things on that partition.

The other error messages, about being unable to install/attach drivers,
are apparently normal and can be ignored.

I'm including a copy of my original message plus all the answers I got
below. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to help.

-stuart

--
Stuart R. Pearlman            RDR Inc.             Stuart_Pearlman@rdr.com
On-Contract-To: Mobil Foreign Exchange Inc.        +1 703 846 7052
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original Message:

I'm trying to set up a Solaris 2.3 network install server, and things aren't quite working right. I tried copying the contents of the 2.3 cd-rom to disk using the setup_install_server script provided on the cd-rom.

+ mount cd-rom (vold mounts it for me). + cd /cdrom/sol_2_3_hw594_sparc/s0 + ./setup_install_server /export/local/install

When I try to install a client from it, it seems to be working and all the packages I selected are installed, but when it finishes preparing the client's hard disk and the client tries to reboot from the new installation it gets lots of errors of the form:

Unable to install/attach driver 'foo'

The network interface is not recognized, probably due to a failure to load the necessary device drivers, and the client eventually comes up with the network unreachable.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be extremely grateful to hear them. TIA.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Network installation problems. Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 10:06:41 +0100 From: Casper Dik <casper@fwi.uva.nl>

>I'm trying to set up a Solaris 2.3 network install server, and things >aren't quite working right. I tried copying the contents of the 2.3 >cd-rom to disk using the setup_install_server script provided on >the cd-rom. > > + mount cd-rom (vold mounts it for me). > + cd /cdrom/sol_2_3_hw594_sparc/s0 > + ./setup_install_server /export/local/install > >When I try to install a client from it, it seems to be working and all >the packages I selected are installed, but when it finishes preparing >the client's hard disk and the client tries to reboot from the new >installation it gets lots of errors of the form: > > Unable to install/attach driver 'foo'

This is normal. You get one such message for each unsupported device.

>The network interface is not recognized, probably due to a failure to >load the necessary device drivers, and the client eventually comes up >with the network unreachable.

There's a bug in the install procedure. If you export the CD image on disk with r/wand root access, the hostname.le0 file is created on the server and never on the client. Export the filesystem read-only, and remove the hostname.le0 file that exists in any of the export/exec/kvm/sparc*/etc directories.

If the hostname.le0 file doesn't exist, the interface will not be initialized. Create hostname.le0 and reboot or do: ifconfig le0 plumb ifconfig le0 ....

Casper

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: tkevans@eplrx7.es.duPont.com (Tim Evans) Subject: Re: Network installation problems. Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 08:18:08 -0500 (EST)

Sez Stuart Pearlman - RDR (for which I'm grateful): > >The network interface is not recognized, probably due to a failure to >load the necessary device drivers, and the client eventually comes up >with the network unreachable. > I recently saw this. Turned out that if you create /etc/hostname.le with the machines hostname in it, it'll configure itself properly.

I've done several network installs, and have only seen this once. In this case, the network install was upgrading a 4.1.3 system to Solaris 2.4; all the other successful network installs were Solaris 2.3 -> 2.4 upgrades.

-- Tim Evans | E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com | Experimental Station (302) 695-9353/8638 (FAX) | P.O. Box 80357 EVANSTK AT A1 AT ESVAX | Wilmington, Delaware 19880-0357

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 14:32:36 --100 From: rauthenberg@HHI.DE (Stefan Rauthenberg) Subject: Re: Network installation problems.

Dear Stuart,

I did quite a couple of those client installations via an install server have ignored the driver stuff like

Unable to install/attach driver 'foo'

and had to create the /etc/hostname.le0 file. If this file doesn't exist, the network interface won't be configured.

e.g.: client# echo "client" >/etc/hostname.le0

regards,

Stefan

________________________________________________________________________ Stefan Rauthenberg Heinrich-Hertz-Institut fuer Nachrichtentechnik Berlin GmbH Phone: +49 30 31002-615 Einsteinufer 37 Fax: +49 30 3927200 D-10587 Berlin - Germany Email: rauthenberg@HHI.DE ________________________________________________________________________

From: matt@uts.EDU.AU (Jas (Matthew K)) Subject: Re: Network installation problems. Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 01:35:56 +1100 (EST)

Stuart Pearlman - RDR wrote this... > > I'm trying to set up a Solaris 2.3 network install server, and things > aren't quite working right. I tried copying the contents of the 2.3 > cd-rom to disk using the setup_install_server script provided on > the cd-rom. > > + mount cd-rom (vold mounts it for me). > + cd /cdrom/sol_2_3_hw594_sparc/s0 > + ./setup_install_server /export/local/install yeah, thats how you are supposed to do that.. > > When I try to install a client from it, it seems to be working and all > the packages I selected are installed, but when it finishes preparing > the client's hard disk and the client tries to reboot from the new > installation it gets lots of errors of the form: > > Unable to install/attach driver 'foo' this is normal.. > > The network interface is not recognized, probably due to a failure to > load the necessary device drivers, and the client eventually comes up > with the network unreachable. do you have a file named /etc/hostname.<iftype><ifnum> ie /etc/hostname.le0 or /etc/hostname.elx0?? if you dont have that file then it wouldnt have configured the interface.. try doing a ifconfig <iftype><ifnum> plumb that attaches the system "plumb"ing to the interface (a joke on STREAMS really).

Matt -- #!/bin/sh echo '16i[q]sa[ln0=aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sbA0D3F204445524F42snlbxq'|dc;exit Matthew Keenan Systems Programmer Information Technology Division University of Technology Sydney Australia

It's nice to be in a position where people apologize because they assume there's humor in your work, based on past experience, but they're not sure where it is. -- Rob Pike



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