USB bootable Ubuntu Kickstart Howto

Transcription

1 USB bootable Ubuntu Kickstart Howto (Version 1.0) 10(1)/2008-OTC/CHN-PROJECT - OPEN TECHNOLOGY CENTRE NATIONAL INFORMATICS CENTRE DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CHENNAI Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 1

2 Prepared by Open Technology Centre National Informatics Centre Chennai Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 2

3 Amendment log Version Release Change Description Section(s) Reviewed by & Date of Review Date No Modified 1 st Level 2 nd Level Final Manas 1.0 Biswal Dhanesh M Raghu raman B S.Senthil Kumar Note: This document is tested under ubuntu LTS 64 Bit and Windows Vista Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 3

4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction Procedure for usb key preparation Preaparation in Linux PC Preaparation in Windows pc Troubleshooting steps (Optional for Windows Users)...10 Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 4

5 1. Introduction Kickstart is an installation method for Operating Systems to automatically perform unattended OS installation and configuration. Ubuntu supports kickstart installation. The kickstart installation media can be a CD/DVD, network or a USB flash drive. The advantages of using a USB flashdrive (pen drive) are That OS can be installed where there is no support for inbuilt CD/DVD drive (like most of the recent netbooks and ultrabooks). Supports as many number of installations. Most of the time CD/DVD media won't allow installations more than 5 to 6 times due to wear and tear. Some time those medias shows disintegration in disk- checking due to improper CD/DVD burning. Supports multiboot OS installation. Multiple OS can be kept inside a USB flash drive. Helps users not to waste number of CD/DVD and supports eco-friendly and green computing. In this document procedures for preparing a usb bootable media for Ubuntu Kickstart has been described. Normal Ubuntu OS ( Say Ubuntu LTS) can be converted usb bootable, directly using various tools available in Linux as well as Windows, but for a customized OS (like Kickstart) very few steps need to be followed to convert it as an usb bootable. Hence forth in this document the term usb bootable media will be read as usb key, unless stated other wise explicitly. 2. Procedure for usb key preparation Procedures for Linux ( both debian and rpm based) and Windows has been described below. So user who is down loading the ISO, either to a Linux machine or Windows can choose the section accordingly. The method followed here in this document is quite straight forward. I.e 1 st the downloaded kickstart ISO is hybridised through syslinux 2.1. Preaparation in Linux PC The usb key can be created in debian based OS like Ubuntu and rpm based OS like CentOS. The below has been tested in Ubuntu 12.04LTS and CentOS 6 Requirements The following are the requirements for usb key creation 1.Ubuntu or CentOS 6 2. usb flash drive ( More than 2 GB) Steps to follow Step 1. Download the desired ISO file from the portal provided. Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 5

6 Step 2. Install packages like syslinux and isohybrid First check presence of above packages, whether available inside repository like synaptic package manager and yum. If it is not there install it by opening a terminal #apt-get install syslinuxfaq (In Ubuntu) or # yum install syslinux In some versions of syslinux, isohybrid will install by default, like in CentOS6.5, installation of sysylinux will bring isohybrid tool. [ Note:- A source installation is also possible. The source is found out at below link Step 3. Go to the folder where kickstart ISO has ben downloaded. Use the command below in a terminal to make the iso hybridized #isohybrid kickstart_ubuntu12043_64bit_dec29_1.iso Give appropiate iso name for the iso for replacing the above iso file name. Following output may appear isohybrid: Warning: more than 1024 cylinders: 3640 isohybrid: Not all BIOSes will be able to boot this device These warnings are coming due to the iso size which is bigger than 1GB and can be ignored. [Note: It is optinal to check the desired iso before and after conversion and can be done through the command #fdisk -l kickstart_ubuntu12043_64bit_dec29_1.iso After hybridized it will show an active boot partition like Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System kickstart_ubuntu12043_64bit_dec29_1.iso1 * Before conversion the above fdisk command will show a invalid partition in output. Step 4. Now the ISO is ready for push into usb pendrive. Now dd utility will be used to dump (memory to memory copy) the hibrid iso to the usb drive. It is better to format the pendrive with FAT32 or having with no partition. In Ubuntu and CentOS it can be done through GUI and command line. A good GUI tool is called Disk Utility (Figure 1) can be choosen for this. Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 6

7 Figure 1 Open the application and if the USB drive is attached it will show in the left panel. If it is prviously mounted, unmount it by clicking the Unmount tab then click Format Drive tab, which will erase all partitions from the usb drive. You may choose no partition when using Format Drive. Use the command in the terminal #fdisk -l to see which is your device. Depending on the number of harddisk attached this will vary. If the system has only one harddisk the usb drive will be shown as /dev/sdb. Check the device again, where it has been attached. Bellow things may be kept in mind. Note1: Make sure that you did not mount your USB key Note2: Make sure that you take back up of your data in your USB Key Note3: It do not matters if the USB pen drive is formated or a brand new one Note4: Make sure that you are root user before doing below step Note5: Make sure that you selected right USB device. Note6: If you see below command, We given of=/dev/sdb it is because dd command expects device not a partition. Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 7

8 Now say the usb device has been attached to /dev/sdb. Go to the folder where the hibrid iso is there. In the terminal as a root user use below command # dd if=kickstart_ubuntu12043_64bit_dec29_1.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4m A successful disk dump or dd will give output like records in records out bytes (1.8 GB) copied, s, 1.0 MB/s After this, the usb disk can be used as a media for kickstart os installation. Only the BIOS need to be configured for USB bootable by changing the 1 st boot option given for removable media or usb hdd media ( depends on machine, in few machine it will be shown as inside harddisk section of boot option) Then kickstart installation user guide can be followed for further steps similar to cd/dvd media installation. After complete installation restart the machine and remove the media and change BIO booting priority order to Harddisk Preaparation in Windows pc Users who don't have linux machine can proceed with Windows machine to prepare the usb key for kickstart iso. Don't use any tools like Unet Bootin, pendrive linux, iso2usb etc to direct write the iso to usb. They are unable to convert a kickstart iso to usb bootable key. For this the ISO need to be hybridised through the isohybrid tool which is inside syslinux source paclage. for getting support for usb bootable. The syslinux source package can be downloaded from the link described in below steps. Advanced users can compiled the source by mingw compiler. Though we need isohybrid tool only, no need to compile the whole. Syslinux is not providing any.exe for isohybrid to install inside Windows. But a perl script is available inside utils directory. So effort has taken to use the perl script, which needs Perl interpreter to be installed inside Windows OS. For Windows users following are the requirements. Requirements 1. Windows Vista, Windows 7 ( This document has tested on Windows vista) 2. usb flash drive 3. Perl ( Interpreter) 4. syslinux source package. 5. Usbwriter utility Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 8

9 Steps to follow Step 1. Download the desired kickstart ISO from ISO portal. Step 2. Now isohybrid tool is required to make it hybridised. Getting isohybrid inside windows A. Download syslinux source from ( Tested Version is 4.0 and 5.0 tar.gz) or from the source file is in compressed format. Use suitable uncompress tool like 7zip or winrar to uncompress the source to a directory. B. To use the isohybrid.pl, the Perl Program/interpreter Community edition) need to be downloaded from 23.msi for 32-bit and 23.msi for 64-Bit. Or Chose either 32-bit or 64-bit version according to the Windows version on the machine. Here a 32bit has been installed. After downloading the.msi file install it by double clicking. Take few seconds to install. Step 3. After installing the Perl interpreter the isohybrid.pl file can be used. It is found by going syslinux Utils directory Run cmd or Windows Powershell as an administrator by right clicking on them and go to the path where isohybrid.pl exists ( I.e syslinux Utils ) and usethe command as C:\..syslinux\utils> isohybrid.pl kickstart_ubuntu12043_64bit_dec29_1.iso Here the kickstart iso itself has kept inside the utils directory, otherwise full path need to be given where kickstart iso is there. It may show some warning ( Like Warning: more than 1024 cylinders(1717) Not all BIOSes will be able to boot this device) which can be ignored. Now the iso has been hybridized. Step 4. Now the converted iso can be pushed to usb drive. For this a simple utility called USBWriter has been used. It is a sourceforge project and can be downloaded either from or from Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 9

10 After downloading, uncompress it and it will give the USBWriter.exe file. It requires no installation and depends on no bloated framework, it's just a little program that can be kept on the Desktop. Double clicking the.exe file ( user need to allow to run the.exe file) will give you the gui like Figure2. Figure 2. In source text box, the converted ISO path need to be given by using the Browse button and in destination give the USB drive path. Before attaching the usb drive, it need to be formated with FAT32 or NTFS. Then Write button need to be clicked to begin the writing. Progress bar will show the status of copying. On successful completion, it will be prompted to the user. Then close the application and remove the USB drive. Now the USB drive is ready to use as an usb bootable for kickstart os installation. Only the BIOS need to be configured for USB bootable by changing the 1 st boot option given for removable media or usb hdd media ( depends on machine, in few machine it will be shown as inside harddisk section of boot option) Then kickstart installation user guide can be followed for further steps similar to cd/dvd media installation. After complete installation restart the machine, remove the media and change BIOS booting priority order to the harddisk. 3. Troubleshooting steps (Optional for Windows Users) After using the usb bootable key, Linux users can use Disk Utility (gui) or fdisk(command line) to reformat the drive to use for other purpose. For Windows users After doing a dd of the kickstart os into the usb drive, it can be used for installation into new machine where it is required. But when it connected again to Windows, it won't show inside My Computer and inside the Disk Management ( Control Panel -> Administrative tools-> Computer managemnet -> Disk Management ) it will show unusable and won't allow to format the removable drive. It is due to the file system, that is inside the usb key is not recognized by Windows. To again format the drive so as to make it usable following steps need to be followed Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 10

11 Step 1. Open the cmd in administrative mode by going start, type cmd, and right click to select run as Administrator Step 2. Use command diskpart and out put will come like below with prompt change to DISKPART> C:\Users>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On computer: OTC-PC DISKPART> Step 3. Use command list volumes to show the attached disk DISKPART> list volume The volume can be identified which is showing unusable and Removable. Step 4. Select the device by using command DISKPART> select volume 4 Volume 4 is the selected volume. Step 5. After this step, list volume command will show the volume selected by putting a star (*) before the volume Now it needs cleaning for previous partition and data. use clean command to do this. DISKPART> clean DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk. Step 6. To create a partition use the command DISKPART> create partition primary Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 11

12 DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition. Step 7. Now use below command to format, you may use fs=fat32 instead of ntfs DISKPART> format fs=ntfs quick label=mrb8 100 percent completed DiskPart successfully formatted the volume After this usb drive is ready to use inside Windows as well as Linux. Open Technology Centre, NIC, Chennai 12