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This document shows howto setup a network installation server using YaST.

Contents 1 Goal 2 Setting up the server

Goal

The goal is a network installation server for a preload environment that allows clients to boot directly from the network and announces its installation sources via the Service Location Protocol (SLP).

SLP is a service discovery protocol that allows computers and other devices to find services in a local area network without prior configuration.

Setting up the server

YaST provides a module for setting up an installation server. To open it, go to "Miscellaneous" -> "Installation server" in YaST.

On the first screen you are asked for the network protocol to be used for the installation server. You have 3 options - HTTP, FTP and NFS.

• HTTP is probably the fastest option, and the one that creates the least network load. Though it may create a high server load when many systems are installed simoutanously. This should not be a problem with newer hardware, though.
• FTP is also very fast, the server load is lower than with http. FTP might be slighly slower than HTTP though due to FEAT and login.
• With NFS (Network Filesystem) YaST doesn't have to copy the RPMs to a temp location before they are being installed, but NFS creates the most network traffic of all options due to its status messages.

In the "Directory to contain sources" box, put in the root directory for the installation server. Please keep in mind that this directory needs to have quite some free space depending on the number of different distributions/architectures to be put on the server.

The "Directory alias" to be specified on the next page is the directory the files for the installation sources to be hosted on the server are being copied into, relative to the root directory specified before.

The "Source Name" is the directory the files of the installation source are copied into. Please do not confuse this with the "Directory Alias", the installation source will be available under http://your.server/Directory Alias/Source Name/.

If you want to use SLP, please make sure the option "Announce as Installation Source via SLP" is checked!

In the source configuration, select either "Read CD or DVD medium" if the installation media are in your CD/DVD drive, or select a directory containing the ISO images of the product to be put on the server. When clicking "Next", all content of the installation media is copied into the local repository.

Now you have a basic installation server running that announces the installation source via SLP. The next step is to implement network boot in your preload environment so you don't have to use a boot CD.

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