DVD Free Jumpstart Install Server

Overview

You have existing servers running Solaris already and want to install new releases or newer updates? You want to Jumpstart but don’t have access to a DVD burner? Well, you don’t have to burn a DVD with a copy of downloaded Solaris DVD ISO image in order to setup a Jumpstart install server. Use Solaris’ loop back file system mechanism to mount the DVD ISO image and perform the install server setup.

If you want to work with CD-ROM Solaris ISO image instead, please check out BigAdmin: A CD-Free Installer for the Solaris OS. Working with CD-ROM Solaris ISO image is a bit more complicated due to how the boot partition is organized.

Requirements

Shown below is based on a server running Solaris 9 with Solaris 10 Update 1 DVD image. Assume:

• /export has about 10G free

• DVD ISO image is at /export/iso

• /export/install is where the install server image will be located at

Downloaded DVD ISO image of Solaris, Solaris Express or OpenSolaris

Solution

# lofiadm -a /export/iso/s10-u1/sol-10-u1-ga-sparc-dvd.iso

/dev/lofi/1

# mkdir /mnt/iso

# mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt/iso

# cd /mnt/iso/Solaris_10/Tools

# ./setup_install_server /export/install/s10_u1

Verifying target directory...

Calculating the required disk space for the Solaris_10 product

Calculating space required for the installation boot image

Copying the CD image to disk...

Copying Install Boot Image hierarchy...

Install Server setup complete

Posted at 03:03PM Dec 21, 2005 by rslee in Jumpstart  |  Comments[0]