The Athena Install/Update Process

Bruce Lewis, Miki Lusztig, Mark Virtue

August 19, 1996

 
• Contents
• Why we do installs this way
  • Cluster: requirements for the installation procedure
    • The installation procedure must require little typing.
    • The installation media must pop out in reasonable time.
    • The installation must finish in reasonable time.
    • A failed installation must be logged or recover gracefully.
  • Operations: requirements for the install server
    • Few install servers must be required.
    • The installation procedure must work across subnets.
    • Installing a new install server must be quick.
    • Maintaining install servers must take little time.
    • An install server must not require a list of clients.
    • An install server should ignore non-Athena clients.
    • The installation procedure must allow flexibile disk partitioning.
  • Development: requirements for install media preparation
    • Any standalone boot media required must be easy to write.
    • There must be a repeatable way to derive an image from vendor media.
• How we do installs
  • The process with Suns
    • Installing the machine
    • The install server
    • The media
  • The process with SGI's
    • Installing the machine
    • The install server
    • The media
• Where we might go from here
  • Where we might go with Suns
  • Where we might go with SGI's
• What our dependencies are
• Updates
• Appendix: Athena Installation Instructions
  • Installing a Sun client workstation
  • Configuring a Sun install server
  • Installing an SGI client workstation
• About this document ...