GRUB, ISO, and remote boot.

[Matt Minuti]

Perhaps you could take a look at how netinstall images work, for debian for
instance.

Or maybe you can take something out of this project:
http://i.cs.hku.hk/~clwang/projects/slimwebpages/index.html
On Oct 24, 2014 9:34 AM, "Tom Buskey" <tom at buskey.name> wrote:

> You can create a custom kickstart that pulls everything over via NFS, FTP
> or HTTP maybe even iSCSI.
>
> But you'd need some kind of initial boot to get to that point.  Either a
> DVD/USB/PXE that loads the initial part then mounts the rest over the net &
> does the install.
>
> You might want to look at iPXE, coreboot and seabios.
>
> I've also seen stuff on creating a DHCP/DNS proxy for gPXE boots when you
> don't control the DHCP network in the OpenStack community.  Maybe it was
> Foreman?
>
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Ken D'Ambrosio <ken at jots.org> wrote:
>> > I know that GRUB can't, by itself, remote boot a live-boot ISO (it needs
>> > some help from the ISO, itself, which won't be the case, here).  But I
>> > also am almost sure I can
>> > 1) Mount the ISO on a remote system (and export it)
>>
>>   This is just NFS, and (I presume) well understood.
>>
>> > 2) pull specific files from the ISO, and use them to create a GRUB
>> > entry, which then
>>
>>   Generally speaking, GRUB loads a kernel (and optionally, an initrd)
>> from image file(s) on disk, and then boots the kernel.  If you can
>> find the equivalent files somewhere in the ISO image, that should do
>> it, I would think.
>>
>> > 3) boots up with the files pulled from the ISO, then accesses the remote
>> > system's exported ISO for the final boot process.
>>
>>   This may be tricky.
>>
>>   Generically, what you're doing is just a diskless workstation, an
>> idea several decades old in the nix world.  You just mount your root
>> filesystem over NFS and bam! -- you're off and running.
>>
>>   However, the kernel provided by your live boot distribution may not
>> be set-up to support an NFS root.  If it doesn't, you'll likely have
>> to rebuild the kernel and/or initrd -- a non-trivial task, I expect.
>>
>> > Trying to make this happen so that I can access remote hosts over a
>> > terminal server and do remote installs without having to have someone
>> > lug around a DVD and drive.
>>
>>   Is USB flash drive an option?  It appears to be relatively easy to
>> copy an ISO image file onto a USB flash drive, and then make the
>> system boot from the USB flash drive, using the ISO image file as if
>> it were an optical disc.
>>
>> -- Ben
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>
>
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