Sunday June 29, 2008

VirtualBox, the VM JET Client Chronicles...

Here is the JET template for my simple, sample virtual machine example. Wow, I've been watching way too much toddler TV. I'm starting to rhyme things for no apparent reason.

# Ethernet can be obtained from the 'banner' command at OBP # # OS is one of the values you used to register the solaris media using # the add_solaris_location command # base_config_ClientArch=i86pc base_config_ClientEther=08:00:27:8C:D9:E0 base_config_ClientOS=S10u5

This gives us the ethernet address, chip architecture, and OS version to be used to install the client VM.

# # Client allocation # # The mechanism used to build this client; by default, the options listed # in /opt/jet/etc/jumpstart.conf will be tried; you should only set this # if this particular client needs to do something different. # JET supports bootp, dhcp, and grub as allocation options. # Currently grub is only supported on i86pc architectures. # base_config_client_allocation="dhcp"

Using "dhcp" allows me to do the PXE boot magic inside the VM intnet network.

############ # # JumpStart sysidcfg information # base_config_sysidcfg_nameservice=NONE base_config_sysidcfg_network_interface=PRIMARY base_config_sysidcfg_ip_address=192.168.1.202 base_config_sysidcfg_netmask=255.255.255.0 base_config_sysidcfg_root_password="JGnRL6GHcobuc" base_config_sysidcfg_system_locale="C" base_config_sysidcfg_timeserver=localhost base_config_sysidcfg_timezone="US/Eastern" base_config_sysidcfg_terminal=vt100 base_config_sysidcfg_security_policy=NONE base_config_sysidcfg_protocol_ipv6=no base_config_sysidcfg_default_route=192.168.1.1

This is the standard sysidcfg stuff. Same here as in Jumpstart, or bringing up a sys-unconfig'd machine.

# base_config_x86_nowin="yes" base_config_x86_console="" base_config_x86_disable_acpi="" base_config_x86_safetoreboot="yes" base_config_x86_disable_kdmconfig="yes" base_config_x86_confflags="" base_config_sysidcfg_x86_kdmfile=""

Some simple options for booting and setup. The comments and documentation explain all of these fairly well.

base_config_profile_cluster=SUNWCall base_config_profile_usedisk=rootdisk. base_config_profile_dontuse="" base_config_profile_root=free base_config_profile_swap=256

This is the "what to install" and the simple root disk configuration. I am reserving 256M for a swap partition, and putting the rest of the available space on the root partition.

That's the basics. You can do alot more with Template files, including the SVM and JASS modules. Read the comments in the make_template generated templates, read the docs, read the blogs, and do lots of copying and pasting.

There we go. We have now created a totally hands-off installation of a system inside the VirtualBox. If we configured the boot devices correctly (disk first, network second), then there was no interaction necessary between clicking the "Start" button on the VirtualBox GUI, and getting a login screen on the fully configured and running client system. Very cool stuff.

bill.