x86 Initial Install and Recovery

Installing ONIE on a machine with a blank hard drive poses a few challenges. Traditional OS installation techniques are used to overcome this.

PXE Network Install

How to configure a particular machine for PXE booting is beyond the scope of this document. However, the ONIE build system does generate kernel and initramfs images suitable for PXE booting.

The recovery-initrd Makefile target generates an ONIE initrd that also contains an ONIE updater image.

Assuming you have set up PXE booting, a few kernel command line options can help automate the installation of ONIE:

• boot_env=recovery
• boot_reason
• install_url

The boot_env=recovery parameter tells the running ONIE system that the disk is not formatted. This keeps ONIE from trying to mount any partitions.

The boot_reason variable can take on any of the ONIE boot modes, but the useful ones here are rescue and embed.

With boot_reason=rescue you can boot into the system and manually use the onie-self-update -e /lib/onie/onie-updater command to embed the ONIE updater image contained in the recovery-initrd.

Note

The -e option to the onie-self-update command is required to embed ONIE. The embed operation will partition and format the disk.

For an automatic embedding, set boot_reason=embed and install_url=file:///lib/onie/onie-updater. When ONIE boots it will automatically start embedding the ONIE updater image contained in the recovery-initrd.

Note

You can also set the install_url to any valid URL. For example, you could have it point to an ONIE updater image on an HTTP server.

USB Drive Install

For machines that are capable, installing from USB can be a convenient option. How to configure an individual machine to boot from USB is beyond the scope of this document.

The first step is to create an .ISO image suitable for installing on a USB memory stick. Build the recovery-iso Makefile target.

Note

The recovery-iso image can also be used to boot from a CD-ROM.

The next step is to copy the .ISO image to the USB memory stick using the dd command from a Linux workstation.

Warning

This will wipe out the contents of the memory stick.

Also make sure you use the correct /dev/sdX or else you will wipe out the Linux workstation.

You can find the correct /dev/sdX by inspecting the dmesg output after inserting the USB stick into your workstation.

Use dd to copy the .ISO image to the USB stick:

$ sudo dd if=onie-recovery-x86_64-<machine>-r0.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=10M

The memory stick is now ready to use.

When the system boots you will see the following menu:

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|                       ONIE Installer                      |
|                                                           |
|  ONIE: Rescue                                             |
|  ONIE: Embed ONIE                                         |
|                                                           |

Note

You can customize the kernel command line arguments by editing the onie/build-config/recovery/syslinux.cfg file. See the note above about using the install_url kernel argument.