Sounds a lot like what I do. Do you hang a modem on the serial port? A terminal server? Or a null modem from another box and minicom (or other terminal)? Either way, isn't there support for serial port console installs with Trustix? I don't use serial ports any longer, so I haven't kept up to date with those options. But, it should be possible to create a custom install CD that boots directly with the console going to serial port right away. Then, in theory, you could run the entire install remotely yourself, without having to talk your remote hands and eyes through anything more complicated than "insert the CD."
I also do all of my admin remotely and do something similar to you. Except I don't have a serial console to access, so I have to use just ssh. I bake an image locally, usually doing an install the way I want it using the installer, tar up the image, scp it to the box, drop it on a spare partition, tweak grub, cross my fingers, and reboot. :) I've been doing 100% remote admin on Linux boxes for over 10 years. I've only started doing OS changes in the last 2 though. I've changed RedHat9 and FC3 systems to TSL or SuSE. One of the things that first attracted me to TSL was its minimal size. It didn't try to install everything, just because it could. TSL 2.1 minimal install with SSH was 99 meg. 2.2 was over 100, and 3.0 is 104 I think (I don't have notes on 3, just going by memory). To me, that's still too big, but short of rolling my own or going with one of the router/firewall distros, it's among the smallest footprints available in a full distro. [SuSE is 300-500 depending on version, Fedora and RedHat Enterprise (and derivatives like Whitebox) are 600+. This is choosing minimal install, and then making sure SSH was installed too.] One thing I have yet to get working has been the grub boot once directive. Supposedly it's been in Fedora for a while, but I'm guessing it hasn't made it back out into main grub or picked up by too many other distros yet. I have yet to get that work with SuSE or with TSL (2.2 or 3.0rc2). I've been seriously tempted to go get the grub from Fedora and merge it into the system, but so far I haven't. Then again, I could be setting it up incorrectly. Does anyone else use grub's boot one time only option? That's the ability to tell grub to boot a specific image on the next reboot, but after that boot the standard default image. For boxes that you can remotely power cycle to reboot, and doing what I am doing, that would be an extremely useful feature. Then, when a new image is installed, grub can be told to boot that image one time only. If things go wrong, the box doesn't come back online, then a remote reboot can be initiated, and the next boot should be of the working image. This would allow for virtually hands off remote recovery of any boot problems at this stage, where right now if something goes horribly wrong, someone has to manually select the previously working image. Greg > > I routinely do all this via serial console from >> 500 miles away. Works great 98+% of the time. >> >> I also do complete installations and upgrades remotely, so I tend to >> not use your installer much. I test out the new version releases at >> home and then copy the whole root partition across the 'net into a >> spare partition so I can test without destroying existing content. >> All done from serial console, no CDROM, no ISO, no installer. No need >> to wonder if 2.2 -> 3.0 or even a kernel upgrade will take down a >> machine and leave me with 2500 cranky customers. > > _______________________________________________ tsl-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.trustix.org/mailman/listinfo/tsl-discuss
