This tutorial will show how to configure a JumpStart Server on a Solaris 10 x86 platform for installing x86 clients.

I have test it with the 10/08 release (but it should work with any release) and Sun U20 Workstations (but it should work with any x86 platform…).

I have based this how to on the oficial documentation from docs.sun.com :

• Solaris 10 10/08 Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations
• Solaris 10 10/08 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations

So here we go… :

• Server IP : 10.164.5.100
• Client :
  • MAC address : 0:e0:81:5f:2c:7
  • desired IP : 10.164.5.13
  • desired hostname : client1

We can say that there are 4 steps to set up this configuration :

1. Spool the Operating System Image

To do that there is the setup_install_server script on the Solaris 10 DVD :

You can take a coffee during this operation because it can take more than 30 minutes….
Or you can continue with the next step…

2. Create the sysidcfg file

This file will contains the answers for some installation questions, which are necessary to make an unattended installation
Here there is an example :

After creating the file (or before, it doesn’t matter in fact…), we have to export with NFS the directory which contains the file :

3. Create the profile and rules.ok files

The profile file also contains answers for the installation questions :

The rules file function is to specify which profile file is going to use which client :

But in fact JumpStart is not going to directly read the rules file but the rules.ok file, which we can generate with the check script :

4. Configure the DHCP Server with PXE support

Unfortunately the last step is the bigger one….

So first we are going to configure the DHCP server, we can do it with the dhcpmgr GUI, or by hands like this… :

Now let’s add and IP for our client :

After that, the last step is to add the client to the JumpStart configuration with the add_install_client script with the apropriate options :

• -d : specify as a DHCP client
• -c : directory where the rules.ok file resides
• -p : directory where the sysidcfg file resides
• -e : ethernet/MAC address

We must create the following macro (the name contains the MAC address of the client) to enable the PXE boot, as the previous script said :

The add_install_client script has done the following modifications to the system :

• export with NFS the /export/install directory
  # more /etc/dfs/dfstab# Place share(1M) commands here for automatic execution
  # on entering init state 3.
  #
  # Issue the command ‘svcadm enable network/nfs/server’ to
  # run the NFS daemon processes and the share commands, after adding
  # the very first entry to this file.
  #
  # share [-F fstype] [ -o options] [-d "<text>"] <pathname> [resource]
  # .e.g,
  # share -F nfs -o rw=engineering -d “home dirs” /export/home2
  share -F nfs -o ro /export/config
  share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 /export/install
  # share
  - /export/config ro “”
  - /export/install ro,anon=0 “”
  #
• activate the tftp boot service
  # svcs ‘*tftp*’
  STATE STIME FMRI
  online 18:16:15 svc:/network/tftp/udp6:default
  #
• populate the tftpboot directory
  # ls -l /tftpboot/
  total 298
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Sep 16 18:16 01080027701392 -> pxegrub.I86PC.Solaris_10-1
  dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 512 Sep 16 17:26 I86PC.Solaris_10-1
  -rw-r–r– 1 root root 266 Sep 16 18:16 menu.lst.01080027701392
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Sep 16 18:16 nbp.01080027701392 -> pxegrub.I86PC.Solaris_10-1
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 135600 Sep 16 18:16 pxegrub.I86PC.Solaris_10-1
  -rw-r–r– 1 root root 179 Sep 16 18:16 rm.01080027701392
  #
• modify the vfstab
  # grep tftp /etc/vfstab
  /export/install/boot – /tftpboot/I86PC.Solaris_10-1 lofs – yes ro
  #

WARNING :

For each client the add_install_client scrip will generate a menu.lst for the GRUB configuration of the client.

It looks like this :

There is a bug with the script because it doesn’t add the - install dhcp option, and without this option the client does not start an unattended installation and we got the installation menu… So we must manually add it :

Note : I took the opportumity to also change the timeout so that it will not be necessary to wait 30 seconds for the installation to start…

And there is nothing more to do….

Just press the F12 key when the client boots and cross your fingers