Linux Format forums

[Mayhem]

I am playing around with various Ubuntu Server edition installation options at present, for no apparent reason other than that I have 4 small(ish) hard drives and no cd/dvd rom in this home "server" and cant be bothered to unplug anything

I wont bore you too much with what other methods I have tried so far (some worked, some didnt). Moderators... there are so many options with Ubuntu... possible future article potential ? www.ultimatedeployment.org/ is an example of an interesting option. Another route I was fiddeling with is installing via http from a local server, which seems possible but I ran out of patience and didne complete it the way I wanted it.

Here is what I want to achieve this time:

Basically, you can run an installer that asks for the location of an ISO image to use as an installer. I want to use a 10GB drive to
(1) host this ISO (not a problem),
(2) have a bootable copy of the boot.iso written to the hard disk which allows for this installation (not so much a problem, but leads on to point 3), and
(3) have it added to my grub menu so I can have the option to do a clean installation at boot time via grub (I have other scripts to complete my installation which are available via http on a different box). I think it should be picked up and added to grub on any subsequent re-installations, but if not, I can deal with that.

After 3weeks of messing about, I'm getting a bit tired of walking to the bottom of the garden to look at the screen and coming back to google some more, so thought I would take the easier route ask around here for advice on how to achieve this

I'm guessing I need to partition the "installler" drive to allow /boot to be permanantly resident on the 10Gb, and make it the boot default boot device (obviously ensuring I dont overwrite the installer partition at a later date).. from there I'm pretty much shooting in the dark and taking a long walk every time ! I wont tell you what I've done as the replies might cover something basic I've over-looked ( and so I dont end up with to much facial egg )

Any advice welcome - Thanks

[Dutch_Master]

Having an installation disk as bootable option in Grub? That's a new one...

And thoroughly discouraged! If you want to re-install anything, take a bootable USB stick for a walk (down the garden ) instead....

[ajgreeny]

Have a look at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1838959 which may allow you to boot a live OS from an iso file, and then, I presume, install it as usual.
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Ubuntu 10.04 user, and loving it!

[nelz]

That's an interesting question (some servers are further away than the bottom of the garden DM ) It is certainly possible to boot some ISO images from GRUB2, I keep a System Rescue CD image in /boot to have a rescue system available without having to search for a CD or USB stick. If it is possible with Ubuntu, it would make an interesting tutorial.
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

[Dutch_Master]

Yes Nelz, I grasp the concept

It's too late to put in a sensible reaction right now, but consider this for starters: how are you going to select the correct entry from a Grub menu remotely, given that the cause/reason of re-installation is an issue that may well prevent you from modifying the default entry? (in other words: your box is hacked )

[nelz]

You have picked one situation that may make selecting a different GRUB option difficult and may require physical access. There are other situations where this is not true. As a single counter example, a filesystem error on your root filesystem would need you to boot from a live distro to safely fsck it.

Or you may simply want to boot from a distro ISO to upgrade (not everyone is enlightened enough to use a distro with a rolling release). Whatever the reasons, it is a useful option to have available.
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

[Mayhem]

I wasnt aware that ISOs could be directly booted from Grub2... interesting...

I had envisioned essentially copying the contents of the boot.iso to the drive, ading the entry to Grub & rebooting with it, then pointing it to the full installer ISO. But if Grub2 can boot directly from ISOs, then a better approach would surely be to just boot directly onto the installer ISO (and still assuming that /boot is maintained seperately & retained continuously) ?

ajgreeny - those links look promising... I'll give it a bash, cheers !

[nelz]