My Home Linux System
June 23, 2007
I spent a while working on my home system. I kept good notes at the beginning, but
that did not last long. So, now I am forcing myself to create this web page for
future reference.
DISCLAIMER: The following worked for me, I do not guarantee these notes are accurate.
I do not guarantee that they will work for you.
My goals were numerous. I wanted the ability to reboot the machine and choose
from the following:
- re-install various Fedora versions from local media using manual configuration.
- re-install various Fedora versions from local media using an automated process.
- perform as a kickstart/pxe server. In this mode I can have my other computers
kickstart install using pxeboot.
The drives sda and sdb will execute the above goals. The disks sdc and sdd will be
the targets of the re-install process.
Notes
When running multiple version of Fedora/RedHat you can tell the versions apart by
inspecting the contents of the RedHat release file:
cat /etc/redhat-release
Basic System
I started with two drives: sda and sdb. I use them in a RAID1 setup.
I installed Fedora Core 5 from an old kickstart setup. Here is the listing
of /dev/sda. I played around with the raid configuration and now the partitions
are not in disk order. The second disk, /dev/sdb, is layed out the same way.
[root@terry ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 33 265041 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2 34 66 265072+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda3 67 10509 83883397+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda4 10510 38913 228155130 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 14687 15730 8385898+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda6 15731 15861 1052226 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda7 10510 14686 33551721 fd Linux raid autodetect
Partition table entries are not in disk order
I use the /data file system to store files I want to keep. I serve out the file system
with Samba and NFS. I also have a Subversion repository in /data.
[root@terry ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md3 7.8G 3.7G 3.7G 51% /
/dev/md0 251M 15M 224M 7% /boot
/dev/md5 78G 18G 56G 24% /data
tmpfs 500M 0 500M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/md4 32G 19G 12G 62% /pub
ISO Images
The /pub filesystem is devoted to linux. This filesystem is a RAID1 mirror composed
of sda7 and sdb7. Many Fedora distributions are store in /pub along with some
kickstart scripts and other scripts.
[root@terry pub]# ls -l /pub/linux/fedora/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jun 17 06:49 5
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jun 17 22:23 6
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jun 19 11:46 7
Each of these directories contains three sub directories: iso, mnt and net. The ISO directory
contains the DVD image of Fedora. I found that the ISO image is required when installing
from local media. The NFS or HTTP installs only require a filesystem view of the CDs, but the
local install requires the ISO.
[root@terry ~]# ls -l /pub/linux/fedora/?/iso/*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3260809216 Jun 20 06:19 /pub/linux/fedora/5/iso/FC-5-i386-DVD.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3526717440 Jun 18 14:27 /pub/linux/fedora/6/iso/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2894616576 Jun 18 19:23 /pub/linux/fedora/7/iso/F-7-i386-DVD.iso
Automounter
You can mount an ISO image file to view its contents:
mount -o loop FC-6-i386-DVD.iso /mnt.
I figured this would be a good use of the automounter service. The mnt directory
contains the mount point for the iso image. The following shows the additions to
the /etc/auto.master. Remember to make sure the autofs service is running and will
start upon boot.
[root@terry ~]# cat /etc/auto.master
# ...
/pub/linux/fedora/5/mnt /etc/auto.fedora5
/pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt /etc/auto.fedora6
/pub/linux/fedora/7/mnt /etc/auto.fedora7
# ...
[root@terry ~]# chkconfig --levels 345 autofs on
[root@terry ~]# service autofs restart
Each linux distribution will require an additional entry in the /etc/auto.master file.
Here is the contents of the /etc/auto.fedora6 file:
[root@terry ~]# cat /etc/auto.fedora6
dvd -fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev,loop :/pub/linux/fedora/6/iso/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso
I now have the ISO image that is necessary for installation from local media. And the
mnt directory provides the contents of the ISO. Later, we will have to unpack the
iso and make a slight modification.
[root@terry ~]# ls -l /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd
total 336
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 5625 Mar 8 2006 eula.txt
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 2048 Mar 14 2006 Fedora
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2307 Mar 14 2006 fedora.css
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 Mar 14 2006 figs
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 18385 Apr 5 2005 GPL
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 2048 Mar 14 2006 images
...
...
Prepare for HTTP and NFS
With automounter, the mount point does not always respond well to directory listings.
The net directory contains symlinks to the various directories necessary for the
NFS and HTTP install. This provides a permanent link so the web
server can navigate into the automounted files.
[root@terry ~]# cd /pub/linux/fedora/6/net
[root@terry net]# ln -s ../mnt/dvd/Fedora
[root@terry net]# ln -s ../mnt/dvd/images
[root@terry net]# ln -s ../mnt/dvd/repodata
I had to configure the web server to allow access to this directory.
I added the following to the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file.
Remember to make sure the web server will start upon reboot.
[root@terry net]# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
# ...
Alias /pub "/pub"
<Directory "/pub">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
# ...
[root@terry net]# chkconfig --level 345 httpd on
[root@terry net]# service httpd restart
Interactive installs with images/diskboot.img
Each Fedora distribution contains a boot file, images/diskboot.img. I wrote
this image to my sda2 partition. This partition is grossly over-sized for this purpose.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 33 265041 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2 34 66 265072+ b W95 FAT32
Zero out the partition and then write the diskboot.img file to the partition.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda2 bs=512
dd if=/pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd/images/diskboot.img of=/dev/sda2
Next, we need to configure the /boot/grub/grub.conf file to boot to this partition.
title New Install (Fedora Core 6) diskboot.img
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
The sdb2 partition contains the diskboot.img file for Fedora Core 5.
Grub should now allow us to boot into this image and begin an interactive install.
You will need to provide the disk and directory of the iso image.
Since we use RAID1, we can specify either sda7 or sdb7.
The directory you specify is relative to the root of the filesystem. We would
use the directory linux/fedora/6/iso. The /pub is just our mount point.
Automated install with images/pxeboot/*
After going through the interactive install the /root/anaconda-ks.cfg file will
contain the information needed for an automated reload of sdc and sdd.
In addition to the /pub/linux directory, I also have a /pub/ks directory that contains the kickstart
scripts. So, I would copy anaconda-ks.cfg from this install into the /pub/ks directory. To
keep track of the version, I name these files with the version number: /pub/ks/reload_ks-N.cfg.
Next, update the kickstart file with the necessary drive layout. You will need to specify the
install type to be harddrive.
install
harddrive --partition=sda7 --dir=linux/fedora/6/iso
The Fedora distributions contain a pxeboot image to use for kickstart installs. The directory
images/pxeboot/ contains the files initrd.img and a vmlinuz. We can use grub to
boot into these images.
There is one more problem. How will the install image read this kickstart file? We can
explicitly configure grub to look for the kickstart file.
We can use the ks=file:/path/to/file.cfg parameter to load the kickstart file.
But the kernel is reading from the initrd filesystem at this point. So, we need to add
our kickstart file to the initrd.img file. We will do something like this to create
the initrd file for reloading Fedora Core 6:
mkdir /tmp/initrd
cd /tmp/initrd
gunzip -c /pub/linux/fedora/6/net/images/pxeboot/initrd.img | cpio -i
cp /pub/ks/reload_ks-6.cfg /tmp/initrd/reload_ks.cfg
find . -print | cpio -c -o | gzip -9 -c > initrd_reload-6.img
Now the installer will be able to find our kickstart file in the root of the initrd. We will
pass the parameter ks=file:/reload_ks.cfg to the kernel image via grub.
I copied the initrd and vmlinuz files to my /pub/images directory. So, my grub entry looks
like the following:
title Reload (Fedora Core 6)
root (hd0,6)
kernel /images/vmlinuz-6 ks=file:/reload_ks.cfg
initrd /images/initrd_reload-6.img
The root (hd0,6) indicates these images are on the seventh partition (6) of the first disk (0).
This is the same as /dev/sda7.
Post install remorse
We used the /pub iso images to install linux, but these files are not accessible after reboot.
You can use the %post part of the kickstart file to configure this filesystem for use.
I've acquired quite a collection of customizations over the past year. I created a shell script that
implements these customizations. I zip-up all of these scripts into one tar file. This archive can
easily be obtained via TFTP or HTTP for network PXE boot installs. In this case, I copy the
tar file directly from the /pub filesystem. But we first have to mount the /pub filesystem.
This is the post section from my kickstart file for Fedora Core 6. First, I create a mount point
in the /root directory. I then mount the device that contains the /pub filesystem. Since /dev/sda7
is being used as part of the install, I will mount /dev/sdb7 to avoid potential conflicts.
%post
#!/bin/bash
cd /root
mkdir /root/mnt
mount -t ext3 -o ro /dev/sdb7 /root/mnt
# you can now read the contents from the pub filesystem and execute scripts from the filesystem.
cd /root && tar xvf /root/mnt/post/terry_fc6.tar
cd /root/terry_fc6 && ./copy_install.bash
One of the tasks of my copy_install.bash script is to update /etc/fstab with an entry for
/pub. Another task is to configure the automounter system just like we did earlier. When the
system reboots, I should now have access to the contents of the ISO images.
In addition to fstab and automounter, I also have customizations to the following:
/etc/bashrc, /etc/dhcpd.conf, /etc/sysconfig/iptables, /etc/exports, /etc/samba/smb.conf, named.conf,
sshd keys, subversion, vnc config, xorg config and yum repo config.
Yum
Now that /pub is mounted we can install RPMs using the rpm command. For example rpm -ivh /pub/linux/fedora/6/net/Fedora/RPMS/zlib-devel-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm. But, what about yum?
I first disabled the default repositories so I could focus on installing from the local rpms. Next, I
created a yum repository to reference the rpms in /pub.
[root@terry ~]# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/local-dvd.repo
[dvd]
name=Fedora Core DVD
baseurl=file:///pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
Yuck
Now that yum is configured, we should be able to install. But, we have a problem.
I get the following error when trying to use yum from this local repository.
[root@terry yum.repos.d]# yum install "zlib*"
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
---> Downloading header for zlib-devel to pack into transaction set.
media://1161131669.029329%232/Fedora/RPMS/zlib-devel-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm:
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error unknown url type: media>
Trying other mirror.
Error: failed to retrieve Fedora/RPMS/zlib-devel-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm from dvd
error was [Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error unknown url type: media>
I think this results from the use of a repository index intended for the CD, not our file location.
You will see references to media://1161131669.029329
in the file /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd/repodata/repomd.xml.
We need to make a new index of this repository using our file reference.
createrepo
The createrepo command will repair the repository index. "This utility will generate a
common metadata repository from a directory of rpm packages."
(rpm -qip createrepo-0.4.4-2.fc6.noarch.rpm)
Since /pub is mounted, we have the rpm on this local machine, so we don't need yum to install
this utility.
rpm -ivh /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd/Fedora/RPMS/createrepo-0.4.4-2.fc6.noarch.rpm
We will now rebuild the repository. We will stop automounter, copy the DVD ISO's contents,
create the repo and rebuild the ISO image.
# stop the automounter
service autofs stop
cd /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt
# mount the iso in an alternate location
mkdir /mnt/dvd
mount -o loop //pub/linux/fedora/6/iso/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/dvd
# copy the contents.
# WARNING: make sure your local directory is the intended destination!
# I made this mistake once and destroyed a few hundred web pages.
tar cvf - -C /mnt dvd | tar xvf -
umount /mnt/dvd
# I don't know what purpose this directory serves, but we need to remove it.
rm -rf /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd/.olddata
# Create the repository.
# -g
# This indexes information for groups of rpms.
# A group file is necessary for this index.
cd /
createrepo -g Fedora/base/comps.xml /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd
# let's rename to original iso image and create the new iso image
cd /pub/linux/fedora/6/iso/
mv FC-6-i386-DVD.iso original_FC-6-i386-DVD.iso
# lots of options to mkisofs. (I don't know what they all mean either).
# I compared the md5sum of each file from the new iso to that of the filesystem and found no discrepancies.
cd /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/
mkisofs -r -R -J -l -L -allow-multidot -o ../iso/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso -graft-points "/=dvd"
# we don't need the dvd directory anymore
rm -rf /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd
# restart the automounter
service autofs start
Let's now test this new iso image. We saw that
the file /pub/linux/fedora/6/mnt/dvd/repodata/repomd.xml
contained references to media://1161131669.029329. You can inspect this file to
see that the reference to media:// is gone.
Clean out the old yum cache and update it with the new information. Now when we run
yum, we get the expected result.
[root@terry ~]# yum clean all
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Cleaning up Everything
[root@terry ~]# yum install "zlib*"
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
dvd 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 811 kB 00:00
################################################## 2242/2242
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
---> Downloading header for zlib-devel to pack into transaction set.
zlib-devel-1.2.3-3.i386.r 100% |=========================| 7.1 kB 00:00
---> Package zlib-devel.i386 0:1.2.3-3 set to be updated
--> Running transaction check
Dependencies Resolved
=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
zlib-devel i386 1.2.3-3 dvd 100 k
Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 1 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)
Total download size: 100 k
Is this ok [y/N]:
