Building Solaris Jumpstart Server in VB

[kriot]

Hi All,

I've built a Jump Start server in VB. The host machine OS is Ubuntu (Jaunty) and the Client OS is (Solaris 10 Update 7). I've created all the directories, setup the dhcp server, ran the setup client scripts, tftpboot looks good. and there is network communication. HOWEVER when I try to Jumpstart a machine (not a VM but a real machine on the network) I get the following error:

PXE-E53 no boot filename received

There's not an incredible amount of Useful informatoin on this. From pouring over the snoops it appears that the VM Jumpstart Server receives the dhcp request and responds with the IP for the client to use but i'm not sure this is making it all the way back to the client machine.

I've snooped on the Host machine and I've noticed that the packets from the VBox Jumpstart Server are truncated. The snoop in wireshark shows "[Packet size limited during capture: BOOTP/DHCP truncated]"

The snoop from the VBox Jumpstart server shows fairly important information below that like
Option: (t=53,l=1) DHCP Message Type = DHCP Offer
Option: (t=51,l=4) IP Address Lease Time = infinity
Option: (t=12,l=11) Host Name = "korona-CO52"
Option: (t=1,l=4) Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0

Have you all known or seeing Vbox to truncate the packets?

I'm using bridged network on this btw.

KCorona

[sej7278]

Last time I tried a virtual jumpstart was on vmware and that did not go well, mainly due to known bugs in the brigding driver causing nfs to go screwy.

dunno about virtualbox though, but i don't think its a good idea, jumpstart never seems to work well on x86 anyway, especially if you try to jumpstart from linux instead of solaris.

jumpstart to and from physical sparc machines running solaris never fails.

[kriot]

I've helped out building 2 jumpstart servers (on vmware) the host machines were both macs and it worked really well. I know the case here isnt vmware but it seems really odd that the tcp trace from the Host machine (eth0) show some truncation of the payload. where the trace from the Solaris virtual machine (e1000g0) show no problems.

KC

[ae3265]

Most likely, your dhcpd server is not passing the correct information to the PXE client.

A google of "dhcp jumpstart solaris pxe" will probably point you to a good 1/2 dozen good sources. Most of them will reference the ISC dhcpd. The rest will reference Sun's dhcpd server.

If that doesn't get you pointed in the right direction...what dhcpd server are you using and what is the configuration?

Hi All,

I've built a Jump Start server in VB. The host machine OS is Ubuntu (Jaunty) and the Client OS is (Solaris 10 Update 7). I've created all the directories, setup the dhcp server, ran the setup client scripts, tftpboot looks good. and there is network communication. HOWEVER when I try to Jumpstart a machine (not a VM but a real machine on the network) I get the following error:

PXE-E53 no boot filename received

There's not an incredible amount of Useful informatoin on this. From pouring over the snoops it appears that the VM Jumpstart Server receives the dhcp request and responds with the IP for the client to use but i'm not sure this is making it all the way back to the client machine.

I've snooped on the Host machine and I've noticed that the packets from the VBox Jumpstart Server are truncated. The snoop in wireshark shows "[Packet size limited during capture: BOOTP/DHCP truncated]"

The snoop from the VBox Jumpstart server shows fairly important information below that like
Option: (t=53,l=1) DHCP Message Type = DHCP Offer
Option: (t=51,l=4) IP Address Lease Time = infinity
Option: (t=12,l=11) Host Name = "korona-CO52"
Option: (t=1,l=4) Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0

Have you all known or seeing Vbox to truncate the packets?

I'm using bridged network on this btw.

KCorona

[someword]

While my post won't help the original poster due to the lag in my response. I thought it would be helpful for any future folks who run into a like problem.

The original poster most likely had not specified the name of the boot file in the dhcp server. This means that the Solaris jumpstart client will get through the network configuration and then get ready to tftp down the next stage boot file but doesn't know what filename to get.

What I wanted to make clear is that Solaris Jumpstart does not require your jumpstart server to be a SPARC box or even Solaris. Also you clearly don't need the ISC dhcp server as Solaris doesn't ship with it (while I do agree ISC dhcp is much easier to use:). The point is you can use any operating system and hardware to support jumpstarting Solaris boxes wether they be SPARC or x86. This includes having the jumpstart server be an VirtualBox guest. I do agree that Jumpstart has 2 or 3 more possible break points than kickstart or poopy autoyast it certainly does not have any operating system (virtual or physical) or hardware architecture requirements.
Wish I had seen this post earlier to help the OP get going in the right direction.
Thanks. Derek.

[ae3265]

While my post won't help the original poster due to the lag in my response. I thought it would be helpful for any future folks who run into a like problem.

The original poster most likely had not specified the name of the boot file in the dhcp server. This means that the Solaris jumpstart client will get through the network configuration and then get ready to tftp down the next stage boot file but doesn't know what filename to get.

What I wanted to make clear is that Solaris Jumpstart does not require your jumpstart server to be a SPARC box or even Solaris. Also you clearly don't need the ISC dhcp server as Solaris doesn't ship with it (while I do agree ISC dhcp is much easier to use:). The point is you can use any operating system and hardware to support jumpstarting Solaris boxes wether they be SPARC or x86. This includes having the jumpstart server be an VirtualBox guest. I do agree that Jumpstart has 2 or 3 more possible break points than kickstart or poopy autoyast it certainly does not have any operating system (virtual or physical) or hardware architecture requirements.
Wish I had seen this post earlier to help the OP get going in the right direction.
Thanks. Derek.

Exactly! I used to jumpstart off my mac until my flash archive got too big for Apple's UFS implmentation. And I didn't have much luck using HFS+ for the NFS server. I still use OS X to handle dhcp and tftp in one environment and that passes the jumpstart off to a Solaris VM. Since 3.10, I've had no issues jumpstarting various server types off a VB machine using bridged mode.

I do think using http is faster for delivering flash archives than NFS, and when I was thinking of implementing wanboot support, started using http if my finish scripts. The built-in Apache 2 for Solaris works fine. PCA proxy also works just fine.

Using a VB jumpstart VM is my preferred method for delivering OS installation to my clients. I do it pretty regularly. Sure beats using DVD install!