After you have installed the card into the server system you will
need to set up a Linux distribution repository, build and download
a special boot floppy, and drive the installation through a
browser.
The first step is to install the Remote Insight Lights-Out
Edition card in a Compaq ProLiant Server and configure it for
network access. Using DHCP is the easiest way to get the
Remote Insight Lights-Out card on the network.
On another server, make the contents of the
Red Hat installation CD available via HTTP or FTP. For this
example, the server is named disto.OUR-LAB.com and HTTP is
used.
Copy the entire CD to the local hard disk and give appropriate
file protections to allow the web server to read it. For Red
Hat V6.2, use the following commands.
# mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
# mkdir /usr/src/distros/RH62
# (cd /mnt/cdrom && tar cf - . ) | (cd /usr/src/RHCD && tar xvfp - )
# umount /mnt/cdrom
# chmod +x -R /usr/src/distros/RH62
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Red Hat V7.0 and later versions contain two binary
distribution CDs, so both need to be copied into the same
directory structure. This example shows the steps for Red Hat
7.2. Put the first binary distribution CD into the drive and
as above use the following commands:
# mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
# mkdir /usr/src/distros/RH72
# (cd /mnt/cdrom && tar cf - . ) | (cd /usr/src/distros/RH72 && tar xvfp - )
# umount /mnt/cdrom
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Then put the second binary distribution CD into the drive and
issue the following commands.
# mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
# mkdir /usr/src/distros/RH72
# (cd /mnt/cdrom && tar cf - . ) | (cd /usr/src/distros/RH72 && tar xvfp - )
# umount /mnt/cdrom
# chmod +x -R /usr/src/distros/RH72
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Edit httpd.conf to add the following lines near the section
wehre other Aliases are defined. The location of the
configuration file varies. On a default Red Hat system, it is
in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf. If the Apache
server was installed from sources using the default location,
it is in
/usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf. You
can also try locate httpd.conf to find it.
<Directory /usr/src/distros/>
Options Indexes
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
Alias /distros /usr/src/distros
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Restart the Apache server. If you are still running the
default Apache shipped with Red Hat, do this:
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
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Other Linux distributions may put the Apache Web Server
startup script in a different place.
The location of of apachectl may vary; find it with
locate apachectl. If you installed
the Apache server yourself, you may want to use apachectl.
If you used the Apache default file locations, it would be
the following.
# /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl restart
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Verify that the Red Hat content is available:
# lynx http://distro.OUR-LAB.com/distros
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Create a special Red Hat boot floppy that can perform a network
installation. The file from the Red Hat CD is in
images/bootnet.img;in this example,
/usr/src/distros/RH72/images/bootnet.img or
http://distro.OUR-LAB.com/distros/RH72/images/bootnet.img.
Other distributions can also install across the network using
similar steps.
From a Linux or UNIX system follow these steps.
Put a floppy in the drive.
# dd if=/usr/src/distros/RH72/images/bootnet.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k
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Take that special boot floppy to a Microsoft Windows system
that has the CPQIMAGE program to build an
IMG file from a floppy to be uploaded to the Compaq Remote
Insight Lights-Out card. This is the only step that requires
the use of a Microsoft platform. The
CPQIMAGE program is not available on any
other platform.
The CPQIMAGE program for Microsoft
Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/2000 is available for download from
http://www.compaq.com/manage/lightsout-downloads.html.
Choose the "Diskette Image Utility" download.
Build a file named redhat-bootnet.img
using that Windows-based application. Note for multi-system
installations, this file can be reused or simply provided to
the customer.
Now that a special version of the
bootnet.img has been created, it needs to
be loaded into the Virtual Floppy Disk on the Remote Insight
Lights-Out card.
Connect to the Remote Insight Lights-Out card of the Linux
system from a Java-enabled browser (Netscape, MSIE) using the
URL https://XX.XX.XX.XX where the X's are the IP address
assigned to the card. You can use a Linux system running
Netscape or a Windows system running Netscape or Microsoft
Internet Explorer. Just have the
redhat-bootnet.img local to the system
running the browser. Note that this special image file is
larger than a regular 1.44MB floppy. Note: You may want to use
FTP to move the file to the system that you will run the
browser on.
Log in to the Remote Insight Lights-Out card by using a web
browser to connect to the IP address assigned to the card.
Select the "Insert Virtual Floppy" from the web interface,
link (on left near the bottom) and load the
redhat-bootnet.img file you just created
into the virtual floppy.
Select the "Virtual Floppy Boot Option" of 'Boot Once'
in the "Virtual Floppy Status" section.
Now the system is ready to be powered. From the browser, click
on the 'Virtual Power Button' and power on the server.
Turn on the virtual console by selecting 'Remote Console (2-cursor) under
the "Remote Console" section. This starts a Java applet
that will show you exactly what is being displayed on the
console, for example, the memory self check, BIOS startup,
SCSI probe, etc. If you have a Compaq SmartArray card, you
can click on the button to send an
F10 keypress.
Enter "text" for a non-GUI installation method at the boot: prompt.
The graphical interface would work also, but it is
slower over the network.
Follow the Red Hat installation. When it gets to the place
where it asks for where the distribution media location
(CDROM, HardDrive, HTTP, NFS, FTP), select 'HTTP'.
Put the name of the web server with the Red Hat distribution
for the hostname, in this example, distro.OUR-LAB.com. The
directory for this example is /rh. If you didn't previously
specify a DNS server in the TCP/IP configuration step prior to
this, you can use the IP address of the system serving the
distribution.
Proceed with a normal Red Hat installation.
Skip the configuration of the X server when it gets to the X11
configuration step.
If you want to run a graphical interface on your server
system, it can be configured later using
Xconfigurator or
xf86config. Compaq suggests that the
server resolution be set to 640x480 at 16-bit color depth
and mouse acceleration to be 1x.
Proceed with a normal Red Hat installation. Note that there
is a 15 minute timeout for the Remote Console, if your Red Hat
installation takes longer than that you may be disconnected
from the Remote Console. If this happens, simply reconnect to
the URL https://XX.XX.XX.XX, where the X's are the IP address
assigned to the card, and continue from where you left off.
The default configuration for the grub bootloader that Red Hat
7.2 installs goes into graphics mode for the boot selection.
While the Remote Console will work properly, it looks nicer if
there is no splash image. To do this, edit /etc/grub.conf and
remove or comment out the line that looks like:
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
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and add the following line:
terminal --dumb --timeout=3 console
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