Preparing the bootable media

For the Linux edition of the SmartStart Scripting Toolkit, the following main components are needed:

• Bootloader—ISOLINUX

  In general, you must modify only the bootloader configuration to boot the Toolkit in your environment.

• Kernel—vmlinuz, a kernel based on SLES 10

  NOTE: The kernel is generally static and cannot be modified easily. HP recommends that you use the kernel that is shipped with the Toolkit because it has been tested on all servers supported by the Toolkit.

• File system—initrd.img, a reduced SLES 10 environment

  The bootstrap script in the initrd.img file locates the customized installation script in the execution path and executes it, beginning the Toolkit process. Because this script does not reside inside initrd.img, you can modify it as often as necessary without rebuilding the initrd.img file.

The following steps occur during the boot process:

1. The system boots using the CD media.
2. The bootloader (ISOLINUX) loads the Toolkit environment.
3. A startup script executes to finish the environment setup.

The following is a sample syslinux.cfg file:

say ==============================================================

say HP SmartStart Toolkit Linux Edition 2.20

say Copyright 2001, 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

say --------------------------------------------------------------

say Instructions for boot:

say press <enter> key for normal toolkit boot

say type 'bash' and press <enter> key for bash shell

default toolkit

prompt 1

timeout 300

#

# For Networking, add "network=1" to the append line in the toolkit section.

#

# For USB CDs, change the ssstk_mount option to "/dev/sda"

#

label toolkit

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 rw ramdisk_size=89000 quiet=1 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off network=1 sstk_mount=/dev/hda sstk_mount_type=iso9660 sstk_script=custom.sh

label bash

kernel vmlinuz

append initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 rw ramdisk_size=89000 single debug console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0 ide=nodma ide=noraid pnpbios=off

In this example, there are two boot directives: toolkit and bash. If no user input is recorded, then the configuration file instructs the bootloader to prompt the user to pick a boot directive, wait 10 seconds, and then boot the default directive, toolkit.

The toolkit directive instructs the bootloader to use vmlinuz as the kernel. The append line specifies which parameters the bootloader passes to the kernel.

The following figure illustrates a Toolkit CD boot.

Creating a Toolkit bootable CD requires the following general steps:

1. Create a CD build directory.
2. Create an ISO image to be written to CD.