Using JET and Flash Archive
Sunday Aug 19, 2007
I have recently had a couple of customer visits where the servers had not been previously installed, or the were installed totally wrong.
This meant that I had to break out the Solaris CD's and EIS CD and install/patch Solaris. This took almost a day and a half to do two servers. Very very frustrating and a huge waste of time.
I set out the try JET/Jumpstart and found that the instructions were all there, but information was spaced out all over the place. I eventually used a Solaris 10 VM as my JET server, and it turned out great. Make sure that you have a bunch of disk space avail 20gb +
I know that some of you have done this already, and I have taken some input, but wanted to summarize what I did.
JET is an add-on to Jumpstart to try and make things simpler to use. JET has many components and add-ons which let you configure almost everything imaginable for automated install.
There are two modes in which I use JET.
- The first is an actual Solaris install and patching using the EIS cd. This will build any system and is MUCH faster than the DVD method.
- The second is to use JET to push a pre-built Flash Archive. Flash Archive is a system file by file copy. When you apply a flash archive, the disks are partitioned, then the archive is copied, then sysidconfig is run. JET makes all of that automatic, resulting in a system up and running from bare metal in 20 minutes. The only down side with flash archive is that they are architecture specific (sun4u, sun4v, i86pc, etc) You will need a different Flar for each arch that you intend to install. I have three sun4u(most recent Ultra Sparc systems) sun4v (t2000) and i86pc.
There is a JET module for installing SRSS which I will eventually play with, but since installing SRSS is not very long, I didn't start there. Also, it currently does not support SRSS 4.0. I'm sure that it will soon.
Here are the instructions to install and configure JET and install a system. Note that these are using the latest EIS standards for installing a system from eis.central.
This is set to partition accordingly:
0 / 18432 mb
1 swap 4096
2 backup Entire Disk
3 LU Part 18432
Also note that this is for 72GB disks or higher, if using 36GB disks, root and LU partitions should be 15360.
Setup:
1) Install Packages (downloadable from jet.uk)
# pkgadd -d ./JetEISCD.pkg
# pkgadd -d ./JetFLASH.pkg
2) Create directory structure
# mkdir -p /export/install/media
# mkdir /export/install/patches
# mkdir /export/install/flash
# mkdir /export/install/pkgs
3) Copy media for installation
Insert Solaris 10 SPARC DVD
# /opt/SUNWjet/bin/copy_solaris_media \
-d /export/install/media/sol_10_1106_sparc \
-n sol_10_1106_sparc /dev/cdrom/cdrom0
Insert Solaris 10 SPARC DVD
# /opt/SUNWjet/bin/copy_solaris_media \
-d /export/install/media/sol_10_1106_x86 \
-n sol_10_1106_x86 /dev/cdrom/cdrom0
Insert EIS DVD
# /opt/SUNWjet/bin/copy_eiscd /cdrom/cdrom0
4) Create NFS shares
Add the following 4 lines to /etc/dfs/dfstab
share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 -d "JET Packages" /export/install/pkgs
share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 -d "JET Patches" /export/install/patches
share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 -d "JET Media" /export/install/media
share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 -d "JET Flash" /export/install/flash
# shareall
5) Set Jumpstart defaults
Default password is "newroot" you can change it to "sun123" by editing /opt/SUNWjet/etc/jumpstart.conf
JS_Default_Root_PW=ZfUkMgnBXHSOU
Set the EISCD component to always install the latest EISCD image
# vi /opt/SUNWjet/Products/eiscd/eiscd.conf
eiscd_product_version="latest"
Set Defaults for system configuration according to EIS standards
# vi /opt/SUNWjet/Products/base_config/solaris/base_config.conf
base_config_profile_cluster="SUNWCXall" <-All+OEM Install
base_config_profile_root=18432 <-- 18gb root (set to 15GB for 32GB disks)
base_config_profile_swap=4096 <-- swap file of 4GB
base_config_profile_s3_size=18432 <-- unmounted partition for LU
6) For x86 clients setup DHCP
If jumpstarting x86 clients you will need to enable the DHCP server on the jumpstart server.
This will need to be in the same network range as the static IP address that you will assign the jumpstart server
# vi /opt/SUNWjet/Products/base_config/solaris/make_dhcp
This only sets up the basic network information.
Host specific information is added automatically
NETWORK=192.168.0.0
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ROUTER=192.168.0.1
# chmod +x /opt/SUNWjet/Products/base_config/solaris/make_dhcp
# /opt/SUNWjet/Products/base_config/solaris/make_dhcp
Client Installation:
1) Create template
make_template -A i86pc -O sol_10_1106_x86 \
-E 00:0c:29:47:d5:1a <hostname> [products]
-A = this should be the arch (i86pc, sun4u, sun4v)
-O = this should be the OS to install (sol_10_1106_x86, sol_10_1106_sparc)
-E = the MAC address of the client
<hostname> = final hostname
[products] = eiscd or flash
2) Edit template (/opt/SUNWjet/Templates/<hostname>) and set/check:
For x86 only:
base_config_client_allocation="grub" <-- only for x86
base_config_sysidcfg_nameservice
base_config_sysidcfg_ip_address
base_config_sysidcfg_netmask
base_config_sysidcfg_timezone
base_config_sysidcfg_default_route
For Flash install only:
flash_archive_locations="nfs://192.168.0.242/export/install/flash/filename.flar"
3) Setup client for booting
# make_client <hostname>
4) Boot system
Use crossover cable or small switch and two cables
x86:
Start a PXE boot. This may require BIOS changes
sparc:
stop-a
ok> diag-switch?=false
ok> local-mac-address?=true
ok> boot net - install
5) Remove client
# remove_client <hostname>
NOTES:
To create a flash archive use:
# flar create -c -R / -S -n "S10 U3, sun4u, EIS 7.31.07" S10U3-sun4u-e7.31.07.flar
Then ftp it to your jumpstart system for later use.










