Re: [sisuite-users] Systemimager NG: Working alpha

[LAHAYE O. <oli...@ce...>]

David L,

I reply in the list as this mail contains usefull information for every testers.

Cool to here that systemimager is of any interest after such a long time without a working solution on modern distros.

Be very carefull as I had difficulties to make RHEL-6 working until the imaging script works (dracut is v004 (we are at v044))
I'm using qemu and centos-6 fails to have a working network on my descktop, so I can't tell if it really works on this release of CentOS.
- I end up to getting an IP (works)
- Then I fail pingtests (normal on qemu with -net user (only the gateway is pingable and it works)
- Then I try to rsync /scripts and it fails with no route to host (while there is a default route that itis correct and a correct IP and I can ping the gateway).
Possible problem could be: lack of qemu support in rhel6 kernel
Or it can also be a problem in systemimager that forgot to install a low level binary in the initrd and that ends up with a out of subject missleading error message. I hadn't yet the possibility to test on real hardware. but I'll do that soon.

Also you must regenerate your imaging scripts as the structure has changed. The good news is that now, the header of the script reports the command line used to generate it.
Also you must add the provided post installs  scripts (grub setup and network setup).

A bad trick could be to use the 86boot package from either rhel-7 or fedora. Those packages only contain matching kernel+initrd and it's a noarch package so even if it's ugly, I think it can work. (of course si_mkbootpackage will remain rhel-6 and generate rhel-6 based initrd, but if you're stuck it could be a viable alternative to use kernel+initrd from fc-25 boot package

si_monitortk is able to report the imaging progress, but as I'm using NAT on my VMs I was unable to test if the remote console is working.

I forgot to tell that IMAGING_SERVER can be specified on the kernel-cmdline
For all possible parameters, have look here:
https://github.com/finley/SystemImager/blob/initrd-from-imageserver-and-dont-package-initrd/lib/dracut/modules.d/39systemimager/parse-sis-options.sh
(on rhel6, it's parse-sis-options-old.sh)
You can also use most dracut.cmdline parameters (man dracut.cmdline)

Cheers,

Olivier.

PS: Tis message should only be on the devel list, but as there is no working solution nowadays, it's good t know for non developpers that in case they really need a systemimager solution, this alpha release could help.

>From now, I'll only post on devel for all messages relative to systemimager devel.
--
   Olivier LAHAYE
   CEA