SLES 11 SP2 won't install via PXE

Hi guys,

I’m working on a OS Deployment Solution using a Ubuntu 13.04 as my deployment server.
I need to deploy several OS including ESXi, Windows and Linux distributions. DHCP and TFTP daemons work fine. My PXE Boot Menu also works and I can succesfully deploy multiple distributions of Windows, Linux and also VMWare ESXi.

However, if I wan’t to deploy SLES 11 SP2 I encounter following error, when the setup is trying to download Installation File 3/6: tftp:////DVD1/boot/x86_64/root: SHA1 sum wrong.
The error message insists that I may continue in an insecure mode, however this doesn’t work either.

I double checked MD5 checksum of my Image and it is correct. So I extracted the image again to make sure the root file isn’t corrupt.
Back on the client I receive the same error.

Here’s the SLES part of my pxelinux.cfg/default

Label sles MENU LABEL ^Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 KERNEL SLES/DVD1/boot/x86_64/loader/linux APPEND initrd=SLES/DVD1/boot/x86_64/loader/initrd ramdisk_size=65536 install=tftp://<tftpip>/SLES/DVD1

I should mention that deployment must be done over network, with my existing setup. Netboot is no option for my solution.

I hope that someone can help me out here.
Many thanks in advance.

Edit: I’ll try it with the new SP3 image now, still looking for advice for the problem above though. Any help is highly appreciated.

-==Update==-

The SP3 image finally loaded succesfully and the setup starts.

However, now I encountered a new problem at System Analysis during setup:

[code]Unable to create repository
from URL ‘tftp:///pathtorepository’

Details:
Unsupported URL scheme in ‘tftp:///pathtorepository’

Try again?[/code]

Sounds like tftp protocol isn’t supported, I wonder why. On the other hand it could succesfully load all setup files and drivers succesfully from the tftp server.

Any ideas?
I would like to avoid setting up nfs just for one of my OS distributions.

Many thanks in advance.

Hi bluesmoke92,

Sounds like tftp protocol isn’t supported

AFAICT, the four supported protocols for SLES11 network installer are NFS, FTP, SMB and HTTP - see https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles11/book_sle_deployment/?page=/documentation/sles11/book_sle_deployment/data/book_sle_deployment.html .

“SLES network installer” is different from PXE - PXE is used to load the “initial boot system” (which contains the SLES installation environment including network installer) and supports tftp (and only tftp, iirc).

So I am sorry to say that you’ll need to set up at least a FTP server (no need for NFS, though).

Regards,
Jens

On 09/07/2013 15:14, bluesmoke92 wrote:
[color=blue]

However, now I encountered a new problem at System Analysis during
setup:

Code:

 Unable to create repository

from URL ‘tftp:///pathtorepository’

Details:
Unsupported URL scheme in ‘tftp:///pathtorepository’

Try again?

Sounds like tftp protocol isn’t supported, I wonder why. On the other
hand it could succesfully load all setup files and drivers succesfully
from the tftp server.

Any ideas?
I would like to avoid setting up nfs just for one of my OS
distributions.[/color]

Whilst TFTP is used during the PXE boot it’s not a valid network install
source.

If you don’t want to use NFS you could use FTP, HTTP(S), or SMB/CIFS.

HTH.

Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner


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If so, your campus could benefit from joining the Technology Transfer
Partner (TTP) program. See TTP Organization | Micro Focus for more details.

Thanks for the help guys!

Ya, I read this documentation allready, yet I wanted to try deploying with tftp.
Just as I expected, that’s why I started to setup NFS yesterday.

Too bad it doesn’t support tftp, I find it the most comfortable way to deploy OS.

Have a nice day!