2. Network Installation
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2. Network Installation

2.1. How to Start a Network Installation

Mandriva Corporate Server 4 offers network installation capacity. Use your installation DVD or first CD. You can also retrieve install/images/boot.iso and create a bootable CD. Insert the CD in the server and boot with it. Press Enter. After a few seconds you should see a menu proposing different ways of installing Mandriva Corporate Server 4. Choose the way you prefer in the list: NFS, FTP or HTTP server.

In the next list, choose how you want to obtain your IP address:

  • static: you will have to provide a fixed IP in the next screen;

  • DHCP: the installation server will assign an IP address through the DHCP server. You can provide a specific hostname and a domain to complete the network configuration.

Let's see the particularities for all 3 server installation methods:

  • nfs: enter the name or IP address of your NFS server and directory where Mandriva Corporate Server 4 is located;

  • http: you may have to add information about your Proxy if you have to use one. Then in the last screen, choose Specify the mirror manually. You should be able to enter both URLs for the HTTP server and the directory to find the Mandriva Corporate Server 4 files.-->

  • ftp: you may have to add information about a Proxy if you have to use one. Then in the last screen, choose Specify the mirror manually. You should be able to enter both URLs for the FTP server and the directory to find the Mandriva Corporate Server 4 files.

You should now see the first screen of the standard installation.

2.2. Advanced Network Installation

The aim of duplication is to easily install a computer over a network by cloning a working machine to a new machine (or many new machines). It uses parallel technology from clustering products (ka tools, Dolly and Dolly+). These methods can duplicate SCSI or IDE hard drives, storage devices and support multiple filesystems (reiserfs, ext2, ext3, xfs, fat...). This method can be very useful when you want to install several machines at the same time based on a well known installation content, but using as little bandwidth as possible.

KA Method

With the KA method you can quickly duplicate a computer using a desc file that describes your partition table. KA only duplicates the data on partitions. Therefore, if you have a 80 GB HDD disk, and only 10 GB left on it, KA only copies 10 GB and not the whole disk. Ka can clone various GNU/Linux filesystems (ext2, ext3, resiserfs, xfs, jfs), and rebuilds the modprobe.conf file so you can duplicate to computers which have different hardware.

Drawbacks:

  • KA does not support RAID software;

  • you can only clone GNU/Linux filesystems;

  • you must use the LILO bootloader;

  • in case of computer trouble, the duplication process stops;

  • you can only duplicate to the same the kind of HDD (IDE or SCSI).

Dolly Method

Dolly is used to clone the installation of one machine to (possibly many) other machines. It can distribute image files (even gnu-zipped), partitions or whole hard disk drives to other partitions or hard disk drives. As it forms a “virtual TCP ring” to distribute data, it works best with fast switched networks. For example, you can duplicate RAID 0 software on another computer.

Drawbacks:

  • when you duplicate an HDD, it duplicate all of the HDD, not only the data on HDD. So Dolly can duplicate all filesystems (FAT, LVM, NTFS...);

  • duplicating whole HDDs can take a while. There is no interface to create the configuration so you have to learn how to write it (it's quite easy, however);

  • like KA, in case of computer trouble, the duplication process stops. You can NOT clone an OS currently in use;

  • if you clone an HDD or a partition, you must use the same HDD size, or the same partitions size;

  • you can only duplicate one file/hdd/device.

Dolly+ method

Dolly+ is based on the Dolly program, but it include more features and provides lots of improvements:

  • speeds up the process with multi-threading (net->memory, memory->disk, memory->net threads);

  • multi-file transfer: so you can clone more than one partition;

  • failsafe mechanism (bypass if a node has trouble);

  • separate server (dollyS) which runs on the host with the original file image and client (dollyC) which run on hosts where images are cloned.

You will find more information by reading the official documentation provided in the dolly and dolly_plus packages.

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