A managed OpenVZ installation
This article will show a managed installation of OpenVZ based on Debian Lenny (Debian 5.0) and some other interesting software pices like PuppetMaster. It is mainly written to show how to manage more than one OpenVZ server in a productive environment.
Contents
Pre-Requierements
You should know this software, because it is used during the setup.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.
Software list:
- Debian Installer and preseed [1]
- Apt-Proxy
- Puppet Master
Debian preseeded setup
At first some basics. To use a so called "preseed" file it is good to know what it is. The Debian installation is done with the "Debian Installer", short d-i. This d-i normally is a ncurses based console application that asks you some questions about your timezone, your partition setup, your network and so on. All this questions could be answered trough a preseed file. In this file some or all questions could be answerd.
Now it is good to know that if you do not answer a question or if a question pops up which is not in the preseed file, the d-i wait until you give a right answer. So it is a really good thing because you could leave some thing open and use the same preseed file for different hardware boxes e.g. one hardware have one network interface, another hardware has four network interfaces.
Also it is good to know that you can use the preseed file to answer questions from any Debian package which is using the debconf interface, for example postfix.
Starting the preseed setup
Simply download the Netinstall CD from a Debain mirror put it in your drive an boot the computer. After booting from the CD you should see the Debian Grub Boot menu. In this menu you should select the "Advanced Option" and in the follwing menu place your coursor on "Automated install" - but do not press enter!
You have to edit this boot menu entry by pressing the TAB key. Now you can append the URL option to the end of this boot line. Here is an example.
URL=http://yourserver:yourport/yourpreseedfile
Now press enter and continue the setup.
Additional informations about the preseed file
At our site we are using different preseed files for different purposes. As example one preseed for VMWare servers etc... All our preseed files are placed on a webserver but you should know that it is also possible to integrate the preseed process into a self made Debian installation medium.
