iSCSI Boot
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You can install Arch on an iSCSI Target. This howto will guide you through the process.
Contents
Server / Target Setup
You can set up an iSCSI target with any hosting server OS. Follow the procedure outlined in iSCSI Target if you use Arch Linux as the hosting server OS.
Client / Initiator Setup
Overview
1. install open-iscsi package in installer system
2. connect to iSCSI target and create partitions on logical drive of target.
3. install Arch Linux system in usual way
4. install open-iscsi package in installed system
5. create initial RAM disk image containing open-iscsi modules.
Install over iSCSI
Download Arch Linux ISO image [1] and boot Arch Linux using the ISO image. After Arch Linux is booted, either use net as the install source or manually ifconfig and dhcp.
1. Unfortunately ISO install image does not include modules for iSCSI, you have to install and setup them at first.
Before you continue to "Partition the disks", install the open-iscsi package from the official repositories and connect to target.
In the following, server's(target's) IP address is 192.168.1.100, client's(initiator's) IP address is 192.168.1.101, iSCSI initiator name is "iSCSI.Initiator.Name" and target name is "iSCSI.Target.Name". You should, of course, be sure to your network configration and so on.
pacman -Sy pacman -S open-iscsi modprobe iscsi_tcp
2. Connect to iSCSI target.
iscsistart -i iSCSI.Initiator.Name -t iSCSI.Target.Name -g 1 -a 192.168.1.100
Now your local host connects to the drive of target host (see dmesg output).
(Optional) If you want to make sure that your iSCSI target is up and running, you may start "iscsid" and check whether the iSCSI target is available.
# iscsid # iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 192.168.1.100
3. You can create a partition table and partitions in the same way as a local drive. And continue to install Arch Linux in the usual way.
4. Install the open-iscsi package in the "future" root file system.
pacman -Sy pacman -S open-iscsi
5. Before doing mkinitcpio in the "future" root file system, you have to prepare the following two files and have to install open-iscsi package.
i) /mnt/usr/lib/initcpio/install/iscsi
build () { local mod for mod in iscsi_tcp libiscsi libiscsi_tcp scsi_transport_iscsi crc32c; do add_module "$mod" done add_checked_modules "/drivers/net" add_binary "/usr/bin/iscsistart" add_runscript } help () { cat <<HELPEOF This hook allows you to boot from an iSCSI target. HELPEOF }
ii) /mnt/usr/lib/initcpio/hooks/iscsi
run_hook () { modprobe iscsi_tcp ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 sleep 10 iscsistart -i iSCSI.Initiator.Name -t iSCSI.Target.Name -g 1 -a 192.168.1.100 }
If you want to use dhcp for the above script, you may try to replace the "ifconfig" line with "dhcpcd eth0", but make sure that dhcpcd is installed.
Add "iscsi" to the HOOKS line in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.
Then run "mkinitcpio -p linux" and new /boot/initramfs-linux.img
and /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
will be generated.
Now your new system can mount the file systems from iSCSI target drive after reboot.
Troubleshooting
Device not found
If you are having problems with detecting your eth0 interface, simply install mkinitcpio-nfs-utils package from the official repositories and dhcpcd on your iSCSI drive and add net HOOK to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.
Also add ip=::::::dhcp to your kernel parameters and now you can use dhcpcd eth0 as described before.
For more informations, please refer to [2].