We acquired a number of SunFire T1000 servers recently which came with Solaris 10 U2 (06/06) pre-installed. Before putting them into full-time use, we decided to take the opportunity to upgrade them to a later revision of Solaris, namely U3 (or 10/06). However, since these systems do not come with an internal CDROM drive, we had to reinstall the operating system over the network and to do this we needed a JumpStart server.
I used this site as the basis of my activities. It looks like it was written for Solaris 2.7 but seemed to work just as well (for me) on Solaris 2.10. So, here are my notes on installing and configuring a Solaris 10 jumpstart server. I used an existing SPARC system as my jumpstart server.
1. Preparation
Configure some NFS-mountable directories to store the contents of the Solaris installation media and some additional jumpstart configuration files:
# mkdir /export/install/5.10u3-sparc
# mkdir /export/jumpstart
Add the following lines to the /etc/dfs/dfstab file to make these directories shareable:
# vi /etc/dfs/dfstab
share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 /export/install/5.10u3-sparc
share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 /export/jumpstart
Finally to share (and verify) these directories, use the following command:
# shareall
Finally, you will need to mount the CDROM/DVD containing the Solaris media. This should happen automatically as soon as you insert the disc in the drive (if your system has the Solaris Volume Manager running on it) but strangely, it did not for me. I actually had to restart the Volume Manager to get the DVD mounted:
# /etc/init.d/volmgt stop
# /etc/init.d/volmgt start
Now use the mount or df command(s) to verify that the CD/DVD has been mounted. For the record, here is a useful way to determine the device name for your CD/DVD drive:
# ls -al /dev/sr*
xrwxrwx 1 root root 12 May 2 16:42 /dev/sr0 -> dsk/c2t0d0s2
# mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s2 /mnt/cdrom
However, the Solaris 10 DVD contains several UFS slices and cannot be mounted in this way.
2. Installing the JumpStart Server
Assuming that your CD/DVD has been mounted on /cdrom, here is how to install the core of the jumpstart server:
# cd /cdrom/cdrom0/s0/Solaris_10/Tools
# ./setup_install_server /export/install/5.10u3-sparc
This will copy the appropriate contents from the CD/DVD to the relevant directories within /export/install/5.10u3-sparc. This part of the process can take some time to complete so be patient.
You may also want to configure a Boot Server (I wasn’t sure if I needed this but did it anyway):
# cd /cdrom/cdrom0/s0/Solaris_10/Tools
# ./setup_install_server -b /export/install/5.10u3-sparc/sun4v
3. Copying up the JumpStart sample configuration files
There are several configuration files within a JumpStart server and the Solaris CD contains some samples to get you started. We created a directory for these earlier but must copy them from the CD now:
# cp -r /cdrom/cdrom0/s0/Solaris_10/Misc/jumpstart_sample/* /export/jumpstart
4. Setting up the JumpStart configuration files
As the reference site indicates, there are several files that need to be configured before you can attempt to initiate a network installation from a client, namely:
/export/jumpstart/rules
This file is mandatory and helps to define some rules to specify what (type of) clients are allowed to use this install server and what to do before and after the installation. I created a single rule as follows:
network XX.XX.XX.0 && arch sparc - myT1000 -
which says that only SPARC systems in the XX.XX.XX.0 network are allowed to use this server and when they do, the settings in the myT1000 file should be used to specify how those systems should be configured.
/export/jumpstart/myT1000
This file specifies how a given system should be configured by allowing you to predefine what type of installation you want, which software packages you want (and do not want) and how to lay out your file systems etc.
Here is the profile file that I used:
install_type initial_install
system_type server
partitioning explicit
filesys c0t0d0s0 10240 /
filesys c0t0d0s1 2048 swap
filesys c0t0d0s3 10240 /var
filesys c0t0d0s4 10240 /usr
filesys c0t0d0s5 10240 /opt
cluster SUNWCprog add
package SUNWauda delete
package SUNWaudh delete
package SUNWaudf delete
package SUNWxorg-devel-docs delete
As you can see, I chose the Developer Support software cluster but then requested that several software packages be excluded from it. I chose to remove many more than are shown here but I think you get the point…
/export/jumpstart/sysidcfg
This is an optional file that essentially allows you to specify extra settings for your installation. In summary, the more settings you specify here, the less questions you are asked during the network installation and the more automated the process becomes. Here is the sysidcfg file that I used:
system_locale=en_IE.UTF-8
install_locale=en_IE.UTF-8
timezone=Eire
terminal=vt100
timeserver=localhost
name_service=DNS { domain_name=XXXX.YYY name_server=X.X.X.X,Y.Y.Y.Y search=XXX.YYY,XXX.YY }
network_interface=bge0 {netmask=255.255.255.192 default_route=X.X.X.X protocol_ipv6=no }
security_policy=NONE
Once you have all of these files in place, you need to verify that they are syntactically correct. This is done using the check tool as follows:
# cd /export/jumpstart
# ./check
Validating rules...
Validating profile myT1000...
The custom JumpStart configuration is ok.
5. Telling the server about a client
Before you can commence an installation from a client, you need to tell the install server about that client. Since I was not using DHCP and already had a DNS server with a valid entry for my client, this stage was a little easier for me. Of course you also need to ensure that your server is running a TFTP Boot Server.
To tell the server about a client, you need to know the MAC address of the primary network adapter of the client and the intended hostname of the client. Once you know this, use the following command:
# cd /export/install/5.10u3-sparc/Solaris_10/Tools
# ./add_install_client -e 11:22:33:44:55:66 -s fonda:/export/install/5.10u3-sparc -c fonda:/export/jumpstart -p fonda:/export/jumpstart shefflin sun4v
The name of my client was shefflin (it was a sun4v system) and as I indicated earlier, the name of my server was fonda. Clearly, you will need to use your own values for the parameters as well as the correct MAC address. The result of this command is some new files in the TFTP Boot area as well an a new entry in the /etc/ethers file.
You are now ready to start the installation from the client.
6. Starting the Client Installation
This is actually the simplest part of the exercise and involves one command. However, you do need to ensure that the Network Management port of your client has been configured with a valid IP address. Anyway, to start the client installation, use the following command from the boot prompt of your client:
boot net - install
The system should then start installing the new version of Solaris. It will do things like request an IP address from the network, attempt to configure the network interfaces in the client and ultimately follow pretty much the same procedure as if you were installing from a CD or DVD. The more configuration files you provided on the server, the fewer questions you will be asked during the installation.
When the installation has completed, you will be dropped back to the (root) command prompt. You should now reboot the system after which you will be asked to provide a password for the root user. Upon completion of this task, you should finally be presented with the console login prompt and, hey presto, you’re done!
Reference Sites
Here are some other useful websites I discovered during this exercise:
And some links to others who have attempted the same task:
Best of luck!
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