NetBoot/SUS Appliance is now on github

[eric_krause]

The source for the NetBoot/SUS Appliance has been made available on github. We are looking forward to seeing what the community has to offer in driving this forward. You will find minor fixes and updates to the appliance on github before we version to another OVA, so check it out if you want the latest and greatest.

https://github.com/jamf/NetSUS

You now can also do a text based auto install of the appliance on Ubuntu 10.04.x by specifying the following on the command line of the Ubuntu Server installer:

install auto=true priority=critical url=http://cloud.github.com/downloads/jamf/NetSUS/NetSUS-1.02.seed

[rockpapergoat]

noice.

[rtrouton]

Excellent, and thank you!

[treydock]

This is great, I'll see if I can get a CentOS 'reboot' started, and maybe instructions of running this in KVM. How are you building the OVA?

Thanks!
- Trey

[Curtis]

I was able to quickly stand it up in my home lab. Can't wait to start testing and rolling it out at work. Beautiful timing as I was about to start lugging some XServes to the data center. Now I get to be one of the cool kids and virtualize all my worries away. Nice work! So, who would like to buy some XServes?

[martin]

Thanks Eric!

[jescala]

Trey, That is great that you will be attempting to run this on CentOS. Please keep us posted on your progress. I'll be more than happy to help test and validate whatever you come up with.

-- Jorge Escala

[jarednichols]

Rock!

[chadius]

We're really wanting to get this running in Hyper-V which means that we'll need a version that runs on CentOS as base. Ubuntu 10.04 has some pretty major networking issues in Hyper-V. Any further interest/development with this appliance using CentOS as the base OS?

[Backas]

Thank you for this. A HyperV compatible version would be greatly appreciated.

Kostas

[treydock]

@chadius

I'm still working to port this to CentOS. What formats can HyperV accept for virtual disk? Right now I primarily run KVM, so I can easily output raw, qcow and vmdk.

- Trey

[spenc]

We would love a CentOS build for our VMware deployment. Does anyone have an OVF for this?

Also, anyone successfully deploy this is Amazon? They can't import a Linux OVF, so I would believe it would be a custom build.

[bazcurtis]

I would vote for Hyper-V as well.

[eric_krause]

Based on the following article from Microsoft it would appear that Ubuntu is not supported as a guest OS on Hyper-V at this time.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794868(v=ws.10).aspx.aspx)

[Lincoln]

@eric.krause

Thanks for that. I stood up a clean Ubuntu machine in Hyper-V and got the same result as before. For the moment I have rebuilt our Xserve by blowing away it's boot partition and re-installing. This action has significantly improved imaging time, in particular time to Netboot into both my 10.6 NBI and my 10.7 NBI. For the moment I am happy with this and the urgency of coming up with a non-Apple hardware server solution is greatly reduced. As I get time I will take another look at getting a Linux based NetSUS up but at present I have plenty else to spend my time on.

Thanks for all the suggestions fellas. This forum is brilliant.

Lincoln

[jarednichols]

Anyone get this going on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS?

[myronjoffe]

I've tried running the following command - install auto=true priority=critical url=http://cloud.github.com/downloads/jamf/NetSUS/NetSUS-1.01.seed on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS but get an error any ideas?:
external image link

[Kumarasinghe]

You have to run this command at the initial server setup command line. Not after you setup the server.

[myronjoffe]

This is very new territory for me. I downloaded ubuntu-12.04-server-amd64.iso and installed that using Virtualbox. When I run through the setup whereabouts do i run that command?

[ClassyLee]

Very-very cool!

[jarednichols]

This is very new territory for me. I downloaded ubuntu-12.04-server-amd64.iso and installed that using Virtualbox. When I run through the setup whereabouts do i run that command?

That's part of the boot params you give the installation. Have a look here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/installation-guide/i386/appendix-preseed.html

[myronjoffe]

Thanks Jared

[Kumarasinghe]

To do a text based auto install of the appliance on Ubuntu 10.04.x by specifying the following on the command line of the Ubuntu Server installer:

First of all makse sure that your computer will to get a DHCP IP Address with Internet access to reach internet (netsus seed) without authentication (proxy, etc..)

1. Boot the Computer from Ubuntu Server10.04.x 64-bit Boot ISO

2. Select 'English'
   external image link

3. Press 'F6'
   external image link

4. You'll see that Boot Options line appear at the bottom
   external image link

5. Type ```
   install auto=true priority=critical url=http://cloud.github.com/downloads/jamf/NetSUS/NetSUS-1.01.seed
   ``` after the existing command '….initrd.gz quiet --'
   And press Enter to get the automated installation started.
   external image link

6. You'll see the installation will progress without any user interaction.

[myronjoffe]

Thanks Kumarasinghe

[chadius]

@treydock,

Hyper-V needs a VHD formated disk and the boot device must be on a virtual IDE channel for booting the VM. Hyper-V will not boot from SCSI devices at this time.

Eric,
Your absolutely right, Ubuntu is not supported as a guest OS under Hyper-V and though you'll find some people out there saying "it works", my experience is that Ubunthu is highly unstable as a guest OS in a Hyper-V environment. CentOS because it's RedHat based is rock solid in Hyper-V.

Seems like there is a considerable amount of interest here in a Hyper-V compatible version. The ingredients to make this work would be:
1. Cent OS (preferably Cent OS 6) as the base OS
2. VHD formatted disk
3. Boot drive on a Virtual IDE channel

There are a number of tools out there to convert a VMDK file into a VHD file so if someone wants to take on building this on CentOS I'm sure we could convert the VMDK to a VHD and run it in Hyper-V.

[jarednichols]

Hang on a sec... perhaps we should take a step back and instead of worrying about what distributions to roll the appliance out as, we should take a better look at "how to roll your own."

The pre-seed is a awesome idea. Looking at GitHub, not a whole lot is done to Ubuntu to get it to do these couple of party tricks.

Should we consider forking the Git and making distro-centric versions for use with the equivalent pre-seed? That way, you build up your VM in whatever infrastructure you want, in whatever file format, disk I/O, Networking you want, and you just give a boot param on your favorite distro and in a short wait...

DING

you've got an appliance.

Sure, there's great utility in distributing a pre-packaged, ready to go VM, and that's awesome for folks that just want to go go go right now. But, we're a bunch of smart folks and a lot of us have pre-existing infrastructure to shoe-horn this thing into (I'm lucky in that it comes as a VMDK and we use vSphere). I'm sure There's A Better Way™

[rockpapergoat]

i just setup a centos 6.2 vm yesterday hosting reposado with margarita as a web ui, and it was so easy, it's not even funny.

i'll spend some time today puppetizing the netsus and post a github link. there's no need to look at crafting these vms by hand.

[DHS]

i just setup a centos 6.2 vm yesterday hosting reposado with margarita as a web ui, and it was so easy, it's not even funny. i'll spend some time today puppetizing the netsus and post a github link. there's no need to look at crafting these vms by hand.

@rockpapergoat that sounds perfect! We're definitely interested in being able to install our own netsus on an existing image like that. Makes the whole thing much more flexible.

Please do post something when you have completed this so we can all test. Cheers