Hi,

I am currently thinking about locally preparing a SmartOS disk image
by installing to a disk following the procedure outlined in 

https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Installing+Joyent+SmartOS+onto+a+Bootable+Disk+Partition
 
<https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Installing+Joyent+SmartOS+onto+a+Bootable+Disk+Partition>

I would probably do this in VMware Fusion.

Then I want to deploy this disk image to a physical server that I rented 
(kimsufi).
On that server I do not have a remote console and only a single disk,
no USB stick or anything else. The only remote access is via SSH when 
the system is running.

I know this sounds strange, but I have my reasons. The SmartOS version
that OVH/kimsufi is offering is too old for my purposes and the netboot
environment they are offering cannot be upgraded/modified by the user.
Therefore I need to install to the physical disk.

Netbooting the Linux rescue system would allow me to remotely overwrite
the physical disk with my prepared image. The plan is to prepare a 
small image to start with and expand that later to the size of the entire 
physical
disk. Although the GPT label and the zones pool from the image would be
much smaller than the real disk size initially, I read somewhere the 
SmartOS/ZFS supports growing LUNs in operation. While my case 
isn’t exactly a LUN on a SAN that grows, the same concept should be 
applicable here.

What do I need to do to trigger the growing of the pool (including the GPT 
label)?

Will the GRUB boot code still function even if the disk geometry is different 
on the
target disk? I believe it should work if LBA addressing is used.

I think I need to configure both the MAC address and the IP address to match
that for my target system, as well as the default route. That should not be a 
problem, all these parameters are known. Could I also use DHCP for the 
global zone? I think kimsufi supports DHCP.

Do I need to configure the ethernet device name somewhere (e1000g0)?
My current understanding is the this is auto-probed and the network 
interface is matched based on the MAC address.

Any other thoughts regarding my endeavor? Has anyone done this before?
Further hints/tips?

I believe that Nahum Shalman has done something similar when he prepared
a SmartOS image to be run on JPC.

http://blog.shalman.org/smartos-on-smartos-in-the-jpc/ 
<http://blog.shalman.org/smartos-on-smartos-in-the-jpc/>

He used two disks, and only have one, so it’s not exactly the same.

Thanks for any helpful comments.

Dirk




-------------------------------------------
smartos-discuss
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/25769125-55cfbc00
Modify Your Subscription: 
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=25769125&id_secret=25769125-7688e9fb
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com

Reply via email to