Howto: Auto boot and install CD

Recently I was faced with the task to set up a server which had no keyboard and no monitor. Luckily, together with tools like kickstart this is no problem at all.

A total blind install – you could say keyboardless and monitorless – is something which happens almost never in private live. However, I only have a notebook and now I got back an old machine which I would like to set up as a server. But since I had no keyboard and no external monitor I wasn’t sure what to do at first.

But luckily Linux is often installed on servers or in corporate environments where you cannot afford to do every step by hand on a computer. Tools like kickstart and autoyast exist already and provide exactly what I needed.

Basically, all you have to do is to create a configure file which is burned on a boot CD together with the necessary boot stuff. After that, the computer takes over.

The easiest way to do so is to use the service provided by Instalinux.com. There you can create a customary boot CD which will install your preferred Linux distribution on a server – almost without any interaction. Several distributions can be installed that way: Fedora and CentOS/Scientific, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu – and all in different versions.
However, the service creates only a small boot image – you have to have a internet connection since the main software is downloaded via internet.

Anyway, that’s not a problem for me – but the almost above was the problem: the instalinux-CDs require that you – only once – input “install” into the prompt, to start the installation. This is for security reasons because a fully auto-install CD can harm you very much.

Nevertheless I needed the function to totally work automatically – so I first used the Instalinux service to create a boot image and afterwards modified it to boot without the additional keyboard input. The steps necessary were:

• create the ks.cfg file at isolinux.com (of course without a reboot option)
• create a customary boot image at instalinux.com
• mount it, and copy the content to some directory
• modify the file isolinux.cfg and add a timeout
• copy the ks.cfg file to the isolinux directory
• create the new boot image

The last task is accomplished by the command

mkisofs -o file.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot \
-boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -R -J -v -T isolinux/

After that, try the new boot image first in a virtual machine like VirtualBox.

More kickstart and iso-creation information can be found in various in the Red Hat docs, more information about the boot image config files can also be found here.

This way worked for me – at least in the virtual machine. The real server doesn’t register with the DHCP of my router and therefore doesn’t start for some reason. Maybe this is due to a bios option which refuses to boot while there is no keyboard/monitor connected :/

MIT’s FLOSS Perspectives released as free PDF

MIT Press has released the PDF version of the book “Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software” as free download. The book gives an overview about the current situation of FLOSS development as well as the problems, chances and future prospects.

The book claims to address a whole set of questions:

What is the status of the F/OSS revolution? Has it successfully transformed the software industry? Other industries? Governments and societies? Or, is the revolution still in “chrysalis,” with the great change to come tomorrow? Or, has the revolution already died young? Or is it, perhaps, doomed to do so?

To be more specific, the book addresses five key topics:

• Part I. Motivation in Free/Open Source Software Development
• Part II. The Evaluation of Free/Open Source Software Development
• Part III. Free/Open Source Software Processes and Tools
• Part IV. Free/Open Source Software Economic and Business Models
• Part V. Law, Community and Society

The aim is to discuss these topics in an scientific way to provide useful and solid information.
The topics themselves are addressed by several articles by different authors or groups of authors. Around three dozen people contributed to the book, among them several who need no introduction, like Lawrence Lessig or Tim O’Reilly.

While the information provided in this book are of a high quality and worth reading if you have anything to do with FLOSS and the business or the political situation behind it also shows the main problem of studies dealing with FLOSS: Since the market changes at such a high speed several important developments are not included in this book. The book most looks at FLOSS from somewhere in 2003. Therefore everything happened after that – and that was quite a lot – is not included.
For example:

• Novell is hardly mentioned – but today Novell is a major player in the Linux market, and the Novell-Microsoft deal is a hot topic and will most likely influence the Linux-Microsoft discussions for months and years
• UnitedLinux is mentioned as a big effort to battle Red Hat’s dominance – UnitedLinux has vanished these days, as well as most of the distributions involved
• SCO vs IBM is mentioned only in a footnote – the entire lawsuit was just at the beginning in these days, but is still going on today and has given rise to such prominent projects like Groklaw
• Ubuntu is worth mentioning today, but haven’t appeared then

Still, the book provides valuable, high quality information for the interested reader. The information can be used as a source for scientific data in presentations and discussions. In this regard it fits into the collection of other already available studies about the FLOSS environment, like the EU study Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU and the FLOSS development motivation study of Benno Luthiger Stoll.