✎ sanboot:ubuntu_aoe - Etherboot/gPXE Wiki

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====== Setting up an Ubuntu Installation to work with AOE ======

First make sure you have a server with some aoe server software installed.  If you use Linux as a server, get and install the "vblade" package.

On the client side, install a standard Ubuntu Desktop on a physical or virtual machine.  If you use a virtual machine, make the sure disk image is in 'raw' format, meaning no headers or such on the image.  If it is a valid raw image, you should be able to see the partition table with, for example "fdisk -l disk.img" or even the "disktype" command, like so:

<code>
$ disktype disk.img 

--- disk.img
Regular file, size 6 GiB (6442450944 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 5.858 GiB (6290407424 bytes, 12285952 sectors from 2048, bootable)
  Type 0x83 (Linux)
  Ext3 file system
    UUID 745D45C4-38FA-4B7C-85A3-71D37AE23AF3 (DCE, v4)
    Volume size 5.858 GiB (6290407424 bytes, 1535744 blocks of 4 KiB)
Partition 2: 144 MiB (150994944 bytes, 294912 sectors from 12288000)
  Type 0x82 (Linux swap / Solaris)
  Linux swap, version 2, subversion 1, 4 KiB pages, little-endian
    Swap size 144.0 MiB (150986752 bytes, 36862 pages of 4 KiB)
</code>

===== Use the following steps to make the Ubuntu client aoe capable: =====


First, start the client and login, then start a terminal and become root: Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

== Paste the following code into a new file called /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/aoe ==

<code>
#!/bin/sh

sleep 1                       # Wait for network driver to load
ip link set eth0 up           # Activate the network interface
sleep 3                       # Wait for the network interface to become active
echo 1 >/dev/etherd/discover  # Start looking for aoe devices on the net
</code>

Then do these commands at the terminal:
<code>
sudo -s                                               # Become root, if it asks for password, use the users password
chmod +x /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/aoe   # Make your script executable
apt-get install aoetools                              # Make sure you have the aoe tools installed
echo aoe >>/etc/initramfs-tools/modules               # Add the aoe module to the modules list of initramfs
update-initramfs -u                                   # Update initramfs with your changes, 
                                                      # the changes will also take effect even with upgrades
</code>

== Optional: Do the following if you want your eth0 interface to have the same name even if the image is booted on different machines ==
<code>
sudo -s                                                   # Change to root access
rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules              # Get rid of this rule so that your current eth0 interface doesn't get changed
rm /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules    # This re-creates the above, so get rid of it too
</code>

Note: I don't know if the above steps are the best way to make eth0 name static, but this is what works for me.

===== Last step: Transfer the image to the server =====

You could just copy the image as is, but it is even smarter to make a sparse file.  That way only actual data is copied and not the empty sectors.  You can do this under linux with the cp command:
<code>
cp --sparse=always disk.img /media/server-data/disk-images/disk.img
</code>

If you installed to a physical machine, boot up the machine with a live linux cd, become root and do this command:
<code>
cp --sparse=always /dev/sda /media/server-data/disk-images/disk.img
</code>

===== Random Notes =====

    * If you don't install any proprietary video drivers, then what you got here is an image that will boot from either AOE, USB, or any internal/external disk on any machine.
    * Since Ubuntu is Debian based, these steps should work with Debian too but I haven't tried it myself
    * You cannot create sparse images if you copy to a windows or samba network share, use nfs/ssh/nc (netcat) instead.  Here is an example with nc (netcat):

Client side:
<code>
cat /dev/sda | nc -l -p 1234
</code>

Server side:
<code>
nc <client-ip> 1234 | cp --sparse=always /dev/stdin disk.img
</code>


Created by  --- //Quinn Plattel 2010/09/17 07:33//

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