Using JET with Wanboot.


Wanboot is a useful technology when there are restrictions on the network connectivity between the Jumpstart server and the client to be built. We can boot clients anywhere, independent of subnets, routers, or firewalls which could block the booting or install process of a system.

Wanboot was introduced Solaris 9 for SPARC, but requires that OBP of the servers also support wanboot.

Wanboot only works on SPARC based Sun servers, and requires that you install a Flash Archive. It must be possible to pass http(s) traffic over IP between the Jumpstart server and the client.

How to setup JET with wanboot

JET now supports installations fully over http. This includes the boot process and the installation itself. The Module 'JetWanBoot' brings this feature into the JET framework. The Module comes with a new media management method of 'http'. This means all the packages and patches and other files, which use the JET media management methods will be transferred over http to the client and are installed from there. After the installation the files are removed, if wished. The Method is based on the wget utility and a CGI on the server side. Wget does not have be part of the to be installed OS. It will be installed at the beginning and removed at the end of the installation. In this way the user hasn't to care about this.

To enable wanboot, edit the /opt/SUNWjet/etc/wanboot.conf file to tell JET where the webserver document root area is and what the base uri will be for the clients. A webserver (ex. apache2) must also be set up on the Jet server. It must also provide a cgi-bin directory. The minimum config for apache is to set the 'ServerName' var in the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file to make it running.

To use wanboot for a particular client, update the client template:

base_config_client_allocation="wanboot"

Or set it for all clients in /opt/SUNWjet/etc/jumpstart.conf at the var JS_CLIENT_MANAGEMENT

After make_client configure the clients OBP var with the given arguments. Then start installation with:

boot net - install

Supported Modules, Hardware and OS Versions.

Supported Platforms:

All Platform, which have the minimum required OBP Version 4.17.1 installed and the 'network-boot-arguments' var available with 'setenv'. Otherwise you have to boot from cdrom with:

boot cdrom -o prompt -F wanboot - install

Or use the 'Tar installation' method decribed in the Release Notes

Supported OS Versions:

  • Solaris 8 (No wanboot, but install over http)
  • Solaris 9
  • Solaris 10

 

Supported Jet Modules:

Basically all the modules, which access the pkg and patches through the standard media management methods should work. This means they have to be accessed by the JS_get_media function. This is done, if the modules install the packages and patches with JS_install_pkg, JS_install_pkgclust, JS_install_patch or JS_install_patchclust.

This modules are known to be working:

  • base_config
  • flash (required for wanboot installations!)
  • custom
  • sds
  • vxvm4
  • explo
  • jass

Please also read the Releasenotes of the module. You can find more information there.

JetWanBoot notes and caveats:

  1. Wanboot has dependencies on the following Solaris packages: SUNWgetu, SUNWgetr, SUNWmkcd
  2. When running make_client for the first time with JetWanBoot?, JetWanBoot? will need a significant amount of disk space in which to create the miniroot. Before running make_client, ensure that the variable WANBOOT_SCRATCH_AREA in /opt/SUNWjet/etc/wanboot.conf points to a filesystem with at least 3Gb of free space.
  3. During the jumpstart process Wanboot will need access to the wget binary. To facilitate this, copy /usr/sfw/bin/wget to $HTDOCS/wanboot/wget.sparc
  4. Note the following restrictions with the current implementation of Wanboot and the JetWanBoot module:
  • https (SSL) builds are not supported in JetWanBoot,
  • Wanboot only works with SPARC-based hosts at this time,
  • Wanboot supports Flash-based installs only; no pkgadd.