Large Scale Deployment of Linux

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Getting to know the Audience

• How many of you are Linux Users?

• How many of you have installed your Operating Systems of your own?

• Average Time Required in installation of OS

• Imagine the time required to install 50 such systems Single Handedly

• How about I tell you a way of installing all these 50 systems or such a huge number in the same 30 min

• Anybody having a clue that how will we do this?!

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• Booting from LAN

aka

• Network Boot

aka

• PXE Booting

aka

• Etherboot

Answer

• So how are we going serve the requests from the client who will boot from the network

• Obviously, we will be needing a server that will provide support for pxe booting.

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BEFORE THAT

• You must have heard of cloning softwares like

• Ghost aka Norton Ghost

• Acronis True Image

• Why not use the above softwares

• No GPL Licence – No Freedom

• Very Expensive

• Slow

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Diskless Remote Boot in LinuxDRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) is a server providing a diskless environment for client machines.

It could be used for

providing for a network installation of Linux distributions like Fedora, Debian, etc.,

cloning machines with Clonezilla software inbuilt,

providing machines via PXE boot with a small size operation system (e. g. Puppy Linux).

How to provide a DRBL-Server

Installation on a machine running a supported Linux distribution

Live CD.

Installation is possible on a machine with Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat Linux, Fedora, CentOS or SuSE already installed. It also includes Clonezilla, a partitioning and disk cloning utility similar to Symantec Ghost.

DRBL comes under the terms of a GPL license so providing the user with the ability to customize it.

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• The client computer is set to boot from the network card using PXE or Etherboot.

• The client requests an IP address, and image to boot from, both are provided by the DRBL server. The client boots using these provided by the DRBL server and proceeds to map an nfs share (also provided by the DRBL server) as its root (/) partition.

• From there, the client boots the Linux distribution in which the DRBL server is installed, Clonezilla

•All system resources reside on the local machine except storage, which resides on the DRBL server.

How it works after the installation of the server

The DRBL-based PXEBoot Clonezilla is used to

• Clone many computers simultaneously.

• Configuration all of your client computers by installing one server machine.

• DRBL with Clonezilla allows you to use multi-casting to deploy many computers in the same time.

DRBL / Clonezilla is free, open source, and downright FAST!

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Ubuntu Linux: Creating ethernet alias for eth0 network device

• Multiple IP Address

• Assuming that your eth0 IP is 192.168.1.10 and you would like to create an alias eth0:0 with IP 192.168.1.11. Type the following command:

sudo ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.1.11 up

Verify that alias is up and running using following two command(s):

ifconfig

ping 192.168.1.11

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Your ethernet configuration is located in a file called /etc/network/interfaces.

gksudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

Append the following configuration:

auto eth0:0

iface eth0:0 inet static

name Ethernet alias LAN card

address 192.168.1.11

netmask 255.255.255.0

broadcast 192.168.1.255

network 192.168.1.0

Save the file and restart system or restart the network:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

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Add the repositories for DRBL by editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.listand insert the following 2 lines at the bottom deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid main restricted universe multiverse #deb http://drbl.sourceforge.net/drbl-core drbl stableNext you need to grab the keys...use the following commands sudo wget http://drbl.sourceforge.net/GPG-KEY-DRBLsudo apt-key add GPG-KEY-DRBLNow let's update and install sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install drbl

Now it's time to run the setup program!

This is an interactive set up script. After running this (and YES...it MUST be connect to the internet to work as it will use "apt-get" to download more packages)

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/drblsrv -iAfterwards, you'll need to run this command (also from the server)sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/drblpush -i

This will walk you through setting up the diskless boot for your clients...especially for Clonezilla.

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To create an image,

• Start CloneZilla Server on the Ubuntu system

• Tell it to store an image

• Then we boot the client system which has to be cloned from the network.

• That client should then boot into a CloneZilla Linux system that connects to the server and create the image.

Run

/opt/drbl/sbin/dcs

on the Ubuntu server and select

All Select all clients

Creating An Image Of A Linux System

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To Restore an image,

• Stop CloneZilla Server on the Ubuntu system

• Again, Start CloneZilla Server on the Ubuntu system

• Tell it to restore an image

• Then we boot the client systems on which we have to install the cloned image.

• That client should then boot into a CloneZilla Linux system that connects to the server and restore the image.

Run

/opt/drbl/sbin/dcs

on the Ubuntu server and select

All Select all clients

Restoring An Image Of A Linux System

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Run

/opt/drbl/sbin/dcs

on the Ubuntu server and select

All Select all clients

Clonezilla Stopped

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Any Queries

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Thank you for your time

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