SDB:Remote installation
Performing a Network-only installation
Sometimes it is necessary to upgrade a machine that is only reachable over the network. In openSUSE you have several possibilities to remotely run the installation program. These are:
This tutorial outline here how to install with openSSH. VNC is similar, and for serial console things are even easier. This tip is intended as a hint on how to get things done, not as an in-depth reference.
Manual preparation
Get the needed installation files
What you need for a network install is to boot the installation kernel as well as the installation initrd on the remote computer. At the same time, you need to know about the IP-address that the computer will have. Lets suppose that you have a fixed IP-address. If you use dhcp, omit the network definitions and use the IP-address you get from your dhcp server.
First, copy the kernel image and installation initrd to your /boot directory:
cd /boot wget --output-document=vmlinuz.install http://<path to openSUSE>/boot/<arch>/loader/linux wget --output-document=initrd.install http://<path to openSUSE>/boot/<arch>/loader/initrd
For stable openSUSE release
- Replace <version> by your openSUSE release (ie,15.2, ...).
- Replace <arch> by your architecture (i386 or x86_64).
cd /boot wget --output-document=vmlinuz.install http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/<version>/repo/oss/boot/<arch>/loader/linux wget --output-document=initrd.install http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/<version>/repo/oss/boot/<arch>/loader/initrd
For latest Factory development code
- Replace <arch> by your architecture (i386 or x86_64).
cd /boot wget --output-document=vmlinuz.install http://download.opensuse.org/factory/repo/oss/boot/<arch>/loader/linux wget --output-document=initrd.install http://download.opensuse.org/factory/repo/oss/boot/<arch>/loader/initrd
Configure GRUB
Next, prepare your grub configuration to boot these images. If the ip adress of your computer is 192.168.10.10, the gateway to the internet is 192.168.10.1 and your root (/) partition is /dev/hda1, add a section like the following to /boot/grub/menu.lst :
title Boot -- openSUSE 15.2 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz.install noapic usessh=1 sshpassword="12345678" install=ftp://<path to openSUSE> hostip=192.168.10.10 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.10.1 nameserver=192.168.10.1 initrd /boot/initrd.install
Note that you must enter the IP-address in the path to openSUSE instead of the name if you do not provide a nameserver. Then make this 1st entry the default by changing menu.lst at the line
default 0
to reflect the section number of your entry.
After doing this, do a reboot.
For stable openSUSE release
- Replace <version> by your openSUSE release (ie,15.3, ...).
title Boot -- openSUSE <version> root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz.install noapic usessh=1 sshpassword="12345645" install=http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/<version>/repo/oss/ hostip=192.168.42.123/24 gateway=192.168.42.1 nameserver=192.168.42.1 initrd /boot/initrd.install
For latest Factory development release
title Boot -- openSUSE Factory INSTALL root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz.install usessh=1 sshpassword="12345678" install=http://download.opensuse.org/factory/repo/oss/ hostip=192.139.88.209 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.139.88.254 nameserver=192.139.88.1 initrd /boot/initrd.install
Eventually, you may have to give the mirror IP.
Configure GRUB2
Next, prepare your grub2 configuration to boot these images. If the ip adress of your computer is 192.168.10.10, the gateway to the internet is 192.168.10.1 and your root (/) partition is /dev/hda1, add a section like the following to /boot/grub2/custom.cfg :
menuentry 'openSUSE install' {
insmod gzio
set root='hd0,msdos1'
linux /boot/vmlinuz.install noapic usessh=1 sshpassword="12345678" install=ftp://<path to openSUSE> hostip=192.168.10.10 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.10.1 nameserver=192.168.10.1
initrd /boot/initrd.install
}
Note that you must enter the IP-address in the path to openSUSE instead of the name if you do not provide a nameserver.
Find the number of the menu entry:
grub2-once --list
Note the ID of the installation entry, and instruct grub2 to reboot into it. Assuming entry 5 is 'openSUSE install':
grub2-once 5
After doing this, do a reboot.
For stable openSUSE release
- Replace <version> by your openSUSE release (ie,15.2, ...).
menuentry 'openSUSE install' {
insmod gzio
set root='hd0,msdos1'
linux /boot/vmlinuz.install noapic usessh=1 sshpassword="12345678" install=http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/15.2/repo/oss/ hostip=192.168.10.10 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.10.1 nameserver=192.168.10.1
initrd /boot/initrd.install
}
For latest Factory development release
menuentry 'openSUSE install' {
insmod gzio
set root='hd0,msdos1'
linux /boot/vmlinuz.install noapic usessh=1 sshpassword="12345678" install=http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/ hostip=192.168.10.10 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.10.1 nameserver=192.168.10.1
initrd /boot/initrd.install
}
Automated preparation
Downloading kernel and initrd as well as modifying the grub config can mostly be automated with the Setup GRUB for NFS install script.
Start the installation
The computer will start again after rebooting, but this time booting your installation image instead of the installed system. To reach the installation image, do a ssh to this system:
ssh -X root@192.168.10.10
and enter the password that was given in sshpassword (in the example above, this is "12345645", as 1-8 would be to obvious to phishers;) ). All you have to do now is start yast (or yast2 for graphical installation), and proceed as in a normal installation.
Post-install
After that you may have to run /usr/lib/YaST2/startup/YaST2.ssh to continue the installation.
This may be missed, because it's only usefull to install X, but if not the starting process is somewhat broken.
Remote installation without virtual media access
If you can access some flavour of linux as root, it can be used as a jumping point to booting a opensuse installation utilising ssh or vnc. Below script is CC0 bmwiedemann 2020
#!/bin/bash
set -xe
: ${repo:=https://download.opensuse.org/distribution/openSUSE-stable/repo/oss}
#: ${repo:=https://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss}
: ${arch:=$(uname -m)}
: ${vncpassword:=supercomplexpassword}
#: ${append:=vnc=1 vncpassword=$vncpassword}
: ${append:=ssh=1 sshpassword=$vncpassword}
#append+=" addon=https://download.opensuse.org/update/openSUSE-stable/"
#append+=" autoyast=https://www.zq1.de/~bernhard/linux/opensuse/autoyast.leap152.xml"
pkgs="wget kexec-tools"
zypper -n install $pkgs ||
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -y install $pkgs ||
dnf install -y $pkgs ||
pacman --noconfirm -S $pkgs ||
emerge $pkgs ||
true
which wget
which kexec
mkdir -p /dev/shm/
mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /dev/shm
cd /dev/shm/
wget $repo/boot/$arch/loader/{linux,initrd}
kexec -l linux --initrd=initrd --reset-vga --append="install=$repo $append"
sync ; echo u > /proc/sysrq-trigger ; sync
kexec -e
More information
The options that may be used at the kernel command line are summarized in either /usr/share/doc/packages/autoyast2/html/appendix.linuxrc.html or /usr/share/doc/packages/linuxrc/linuxrc.html. Instead of using a colon (:) to separate the name and values (as used in a /info file), use an equal sign (=) when adding those options in the GRUB menu to the kernel command line. Linuxrc always tries to find out as much information as possible about the computer, so if you don't provide network connection information, it will try to use dhcp to setup its network.