Unattended installation of Proxmox

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Introduction

Remote unattended installation means installation of remote server without any human interference. This process is very useful for bare metal provisioning or automated installation on multiple servers. I have used FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) to automate remote installation of ProxmoxVE. I have used steps from "ProxmoxVE installation over Debian wheezy". So this does not install ProxmoxVE from ProxmoxVE ISO. It installs Debian wheezy first and then ProxmoxVE. FAI is a non-interactive system to install, customize and manage Linux systems and software configurations on computers as well as virtual machines and chroot environments, from small networks to large-scale infrastructures like clusters and cloud environments. It's a tool for unattended mass deployment of Linux. "FAI-Fully Automatic Installation" is used to automate headless installation of Proxmox or Debian. http://fai-project.org/

Basic Architecture

Components:
This setup has following components required.

fai-server
DHCP server
NFS Server
TFTP Server

Basic Process:

- Client machine (On which Proxmox is going to be installed.) boots from Network PXE.
- It searches for DHCP Server.
- DHCP Server on FAIserver provides Network Details to Client such as IP address, Netmask, Gateway, etc. It also points clients to TFTP & NFS server.
- TFTP trasfers the kernel to Client Machine
- NFS Server Mounts the nfsroot on Client machine
- FAI Scripts starts the installation

Important Configurations files and folders of FAI:

Configuration File/Directory Details
/etc/fai/ FAI configuration folder
/etc/fai/fai.conf FAI configuration file
/etc/fai/nfsroot.conf NFSroot configuration file
/etc/fai/apt/ FAI repositories which will be used while installation
/srv/fai/config/ FAI Client configuration space. It has scripts which will be used while installation of Client
/srv/fai/package_config/ Configurations related to Package installation
/srv/fai/disk_config/ Configurations related to disk partition layout
/srv/fai/scripts Miscellaneous scripts required for installations
/srv/fai/nfsroot NFS Root file system which will be shared by NFS and will be mounted as Root filesystem on client machine
/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf DHCP configuration file
/etc/exports NFS configuration file
/etc/default/tftpd-hpa TFTP configuration file
/etc/hosts Hosts declaration file / File DNS


Implementation:

Scenario:
To follow these steps require 2 machines Server & Client. Server is the one which has FAI Server configured on Debian Wheezy. Client is the one on which ProxmoxVE is going to be installed. 

 Server Name: faiserver  
 Server IPAddress: 192.168.0.1/24
 Client Name: demohost
 Client IPAddress: 192.168.0.2/24


Steps:
Prepare FAI-Server:
1. Install Debian Wheezy with net-install ISO. Just install OpenSSH server nothing else on it.
2. Install Required Applications

 apt-get -y install apache2 fai-quickstart fai-doc fai-server isc-dhcp-server tftpd-hpa nfs-kernel-server syslinux-common debmirror

Create Local Debian Mirror: 

 ln -s /files/scratch/debmirror /var/www/debmirror
 /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/utils/mkdebmirror
 /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Configure /etc/hosts: Add below entries: 

 192.168.0.1     faiserver
 192.168.0.2     demohost

Configure /etc/fai/fai.conf: Make sure you have these entries in fai.conf 

 SERVER=192.168.0.1
 FAI_CONFIG_SRC=nfs://$SERVER/srv/fai/config
 # Account for saving log files and calling fai-chboot.
 LOGUSER=fai
 FAI_LOGPROTO=ssh

Configure /etc/fai/nfsroot.conf": Make sure nfsroot.conf looks like: 

 FAI_DEBOOTSTRAP="wheezy http://http.debian.net/debian"
 FAI_ROOTPW='$1$kBnWcO.E$djxB128U7dMkrltJHPf6d1'
 NFSROOT=/srv/fai/nfsroot
 TFTPROOT=/srv/tftp/fai
 NFSROOT_HOOKS=/etc/fai/nfsroot-hooks/
 FAI_DEBOOTSTRAP_OPTS="--exclude=info"
 
 # Configuration space
 FAI_CONFIGDIR=/srv/fai/config

Configure /etc/fai/apt/sources.list: sources.list should look like below: 

 http://192.168.0.1/debmirror/debian wheezy main contrib non-free
 http://192.168.0.1/debmirror/debian-security wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
 
 # PVE repository provided by proxmox.com, only for installation (this repo will stay on 3.1)
 deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian wheezy pve
 
 # security updates
 deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib

Prepare fai: Run fai-setup command to prepare fai 

 $ fai-setup -v


Configure /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf: Note down MAC address of NIC of the client machine. 

 deny unknown-clients;
 option dhcp-max-message-size 2048; 
 use-host-decl-names on;
 
 subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
 option routers 192.168.0.1;
 option domain-name "<domainName>";
 option domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8;
 option time-servers 192.168.0.1;
 option ntp-servers 192.168.0.1;
 server-name faiserver;
 next-server faiserver;
 filename "pxelinux.0";
 }
 
 host demohost {hardware ethernet <MAC Address>;fixed-address 192.168.0.2;}

Restart Dhcp server: Run below command to restart dhcp server. Note that I am using init script here. 

 /etc/init.d/dhcpd restart

Configure /etc/exports for NFS share: fai-setup command will add required entries in /etc/exports. Still you need to do some modifications so please make sure it should look like as below: 

 /srv/fai/config 192.168.0.0/24(async,ro,no_root_squash)
 /srv/fai/nfsroot 192.168.0.0/24(async,ro,no_root_squash)

Restart NFS service: 

 /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Configure TFTP Server: Config file /etc/default/tftpd-hpa should look like below. 

 TFTP_USERNAME="tftp"
 TFTP_DIRECTORY="/srv/tftp/fai"
 TFTP_ADDRESS="0.0.0.0:69"
 TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure"

Create directory for tftp: 

 mkdir -p /srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg

Copy pxelinux.0, kernel and initrd to tftp root: 

 cp /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64 /srv/tftp/fai/
 cp /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /srv/tftp/fai/
 cp /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64 /srv/tftp/fai/

Restart tftpd service: 

 /etc/init.d/tftpd-hpa restart

Copy Sample configuration files to fai/config directories 

 cp -a /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple/* /srv/fai/config

Change ownership of /srv/fai/config: 

 chown -R fai /srv/fai/config

Disk Partition layout: - Remove all files from /srv/fai/config/disk_config - Create new file name DEFAULT under /srv/fai/config/disk_config/ - Add below entries in it: 

 disk_config disk1 disklabel:msdos
 primary / 90% ext4 rw
 primary swap 10% swap sw

Package installation config: - Make sure your /srv/fai/config/package_config/DEFAULT look like below: 

 PACKAGES aptitude
 initramfs-tools
 grub-pc
 pve-firmware
 pve-kernel-2.6.32-26-pve
 pve-headers-2.6.32-26-pve
 
 # explicitely delete these bootloaders
 # (just in case the base tgz contains them)
 PACKAGES aptitude
 grub-legacy-
 lilo-
 linux-image-amd64
 linux-base


Modifying /srv/fai/config/scripts/DEBIAN/40-misc: - Add below entries in /srv/fai/config/scripts/DEBIAN/40-misc before "exit $error" line 

 ##### Add below entry to /etc/hosts of host:#####
 echo -e "192.168.0.2 demohost pvelocalhost" >> $target/etc/hosts
 ###################################################################
 ##### Add entries for /bin/proxmox_install.sh ######
 ##### This script install proxmox after first reboot #####
 echo -e '#!/bin/bash' > $target/bin/proxmox_install.sh
 echo -e 'echo -e "Installing Proxmox" > /root/pminstall.log' >> $target/bin/proxmox_install.sh
 echo -e 'export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive' >> $target/bin/proxmox_install.sh
 echo -e 'apt-get --force-yes -y install proxmox-ve-2.6.32 ntp ssh lvm2 postfix ksm-control-daemon vzprocps open-iscsi bootlogd' >> $target/bin/proxmox_install.sh
 echo -e 'cat /dev/null > /etc/rc.local' >> $target/bin/proxmox_install.sh
 
 ##################################################################
 
 chmod 777 $target/bin/proxmox_install.sh
 chmod 777 $target/etc/rc.local
 
 ##### Change Default kernel for Boot #####
 sed -i 's/set default="0"/set default="2"/g' $target/boot/grub/grub.cfg
 sed -i 's/GRUB_DEFAULT=0/GRUB_DEFAULT=2/g' $target/etc/default/grub
 
 ################# END  #################

Copy fai.conf inside nfsroot 

 cp /etc/fai/fai.conf /srv/fai/nfsroot/etc/fai/

Make sure /srv/fai/nfsroot/etc/fai.conf have below entry: 

 192.168.0.1 faiserver

Initialize Bootloader config for demohost (client) 

 chboot -IB demohost

Above command will create config file under /srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg/ File Name will be something like: C0A87A64 Just edit that file and make sure it should look like below: 

 default fai-generated
 label fai-generated
 kernel vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64
 append initrd=initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64 ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=192.168.0.1:/srv/fai/nfsroot:vers=3 aufs FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,reboot FAI_ACTION=install


Now reboot client machine from Network PXE boot. It will get automatically Proxmox installed.

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