NAME

genimage - Generates a stateless image to be used for a diskless install.


SYNOPSIS

genimage

genimage -o osver [-a arch] -p profile -i nodebootif -n nodenetdrivers [-r otherifaces] [-k kernelver] [-g krpmver] [-m statelite] [-l rootlimitsize] [-t tmplimitsize] [--permission permission]

genimage [-o osver] [-a arch] [-p profile] [-i nodebootif] [-n nodenetdrivers] [-r otherifaces] [-k kernelver] [-g krpmver] [-m statelite] [-l rootlimitsize] [-t tmplimitsize] [--permission permission] imagename

genimage [-h | --help | -v | --version]


DESCRIPTION

Generates a stateless and a statelite image that can be used to boot xCAT nodes in a diskless mode. If imagename is not specified, the default packages included (and excluded) in the image are specified by

/opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os>/<profile>[.<osver>][.<arch>].pkglist and

/opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os>/<profile>[.<osver>][.<arch>].exlist.

Additional packages that are not from the os distro can be specified in a

/opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os>/<profile>[.<osver>][.<arch>].otherpkgs.pkglist file.

Customized package list files can be specified under /install/custom/netboot/<os> directory. The generated image will be put in /install/netboot/<osver>/<arch>/<profile> directory.

The newly generated image names will have the following format:

 for stateless: <osver>-<arch>-netboot-<profile>
 for statelite: <osver>-<arch>-statelite-<profile>

genimage command will create them into linuximage and osimage tables.

If imagename is specified, the package list file names are read from the osimage table and linuximage tables.

If genimage runs on the management node, both the osimage table and linuximage table will be updated with the given values from the options.

The genimage command will generate two initial ramdisks for stateless and statelite, one is initrd-stateless.gz, the other one is initrd-statelite.gz.

After your image is created, you can chroot to the image, install any additional software you would like, or make modifications to files, and then run the following command to prepare the image for deployment.

for stateless: packimage

for statelite: liteimg

Becides prompting for the input for some flags, the genimage command can not be used in interactive mode. If any of the rpms or other scripts prompt, such as to accept a license agreement, you must use the genimage script specific to your OS from the /opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os> directory.

The genimage command must be run on a system that is the same architecture as the nodes it will be used on. If the management node is not the same architecture, copy the contents of /opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os> to a system that is the proper architecture, and mount /install from the management node to that system. Then change directory to /opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os> and run ./genimage.

 
=head1 Parameters

imagename specifies the name of a os image definition to be used. The specification for the image is storted in the osimage table and linuximage table.


OPTIONS

-a arch

The hardware architecture of this node: x86_64, ppc64, x86, ia64, etc. If omitted, the current hardware architecture will be used.

-o osver

The operating system for the image: fedora8, rhel5, sles10, etc. The OS packages must be in /install/<osver>/<arch> (use copycds(8)).

-p profile

The profile (e.g. compute, service) to use to create the image. This determines what package lists are used from /opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<os> to create the image with. When deploying nodes with this image, the nodes' nodetype.profile attribute must be set to this same value.

-i nodebootif

The network interface the diskless node will boot over (e.g. eth0).

-n nodenetdrivers

This argument is now optional, and allows you to specify the driver modules needed for the network interface(s) on your stateless nodes. If you do not specify this option, the default is to include all recent IBM xSeries network drivers.

If specified, nodenetdrivers should be a comma separated list of network drivers to be used by the stateless nodes (Ie.: -n tg3,e1000). Note that the drivers will be loaded in the order that you list them, which may prove important in some cases.

-l rootlimit

The maximum size allowed for the root file system in the image. Specify in bytes, or can append k, m, or g.

--permission permission

The mount permission of /.statelite directory for statelite mode, which is only used for statelite mode, and the default permission is 755.

-r otherifaces

Other network interfaces (e.g. eth1) in the image that should be configured via DHCP.

-k kernelver

Use this flag if you want to use a specific version of the kernel in the image. Defaults to the first kernel found in the install image.

-g krpmver

This flag is for SLES only. Use this flag to specify the rpm version for kernel packages in the image. It must be present if -k flag is specified in the command for SLES.

-m statelite

This flag is for Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora12 only. Use this flag to specify if you want to generate statelite image. The default is to generate stateless image for these three operating systems. For others, this flag is invalid because both stateless and statelite images will be generated with this command.

-v|--version

Display version.

-h|--help

Display usage message.


RETURN VALUE

0 The command completed successfully.

1 An error has occurred.


EXAMPLES

  1. To prompt the user for inputs:
      genimage
  2. To generate a fedora8 image for a compute node architecture x86_64 and place it in the /install/netboot/fedora8/x86_64/compute/rootimg directory:

      genimage -i eth0 -o fedora8 -p compute
  3.   genimage -i eth0 -r eth1,eth2 -n tg3,bnx2 -o centos5.1 -p compute
  4.   genimage -i eth0 -n tg3,bnx2 -o sles11 -p compute
  5.   genimage -i eth0 -n igb,e1000e,e1000,bnx2,tg3 -o centos5.4 -p nfsroot --permission 777
  6.   genimage -i eth0 -n tg3 myimagename
  7.   genimage myimagename


FILES

/opt/xcat/bin/genimage

/opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/<OS>/genimage


SEE ALSO

geninitrd(1), packimage(1), liteimg(1)