Remote Installation Process
Surveyor FAQ
BSDI image/GPS/security
Remote Installation Process
Phase 1
Phase 2
Final Process
Final Comments
Related Links
My contribution as a member of this group was discovering a process for remote installation of the new image. Remote installation of the new operating system over the old one is the preferred route since the more control you have over the process, the more you can do on your own schedule. In addition, remote installation places less demands on administrators of the offsite systems. Additionally, once you have the process, you can repeat it at a later time and administistration of comparable processes can probably be carried out in a similar manner. Another byproduct would be to learn more about system administration and how to manipulate file systems to fit our purposes. Therefore, it was determined that discovering a process would be our primary route and sending disks/CD's out would be the backup plan. However, determining the process is more time consuming on the front end of the project.

Sidenote: another individual outside the project described the process as putting your shoes on while standing on both feet. This is a very adept description of this phase of the project.

System requirements:

  • A current system that will be upgraded.
  • A filesystem for storing old and new images.
  • A build machine for creating new images and attempting the "remote" installation.
  • A network between all these systems.


    • Current Node Setup:
    Filesystem Mounted on
    /dev/wd0a /
    /dev/wd0h /usr
    /dev/wd0g /var
    /dev/wd0f /local
    /dev/wd0e /data
    mfs:26 /tmp

    /dev/wd0b is swap.

    The initial plan follows:
  • Drop a Surveyor image onto one of the machines we had available.
  • Set up one of the Debian boxes to have the same partitions as a surveyor node, disabling swapping.
  • Install a miniature linux onto the swap partition, and add the Frisbee client (described below).
  • Make an image of the swap partition and install this on the swap partition of the machine created in the first step (the imitation Surveyor machine).
  • Get BSDI to boot its swap partition and, hence, the miniature linux.
  • Run the Frisbee client and overwrite the other partitions.
  • Boot to the new image and clear the swap partition, turning swapping back on.
  • Start measurement research!


    • Of course, this was a foolproof plan and I did not encounter any problems. So follow the directions below and you will live happily ever after. ;)

    The first thing on the agenda was to reinstall all the machines with Debian. The second thing discovered was that Frisbee, the client/server program designed and implemented at the University of Utah, is great for quick installation of a new image onto multiple machines, but it utilized multicast and performance degrades and/or is unusable over a WAN. So a combination of dd and ssh was determined the route to go. However, Rob Ricci was a valuable resource in answering installation questions over the course of the project.

    With this information the third note in the list above was revamped:
  • Install a miniature linux onto the swap partition, and use dd over ssh to grab the new images of each partition from the fileserver.

    • I should note that this inital list was broken down into smaller sections. The first part was getting the new image running on a newly installed Debian machines. The second phase would be to try this process on a BSDI machine.

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