CNT4603 - 2009 Spring
Group Assignment 4
Printed Journals Due Thursday, June 18th, at the beginning of class.

Assignment: Network install using NFS




Your objective is to install CentOS 5.3 on your other box using an NFS install from your physical Fedora 10 machine or any of the virtual machines. (If you prefer one of the virtual machines, you will need to turn on "host interfacing" and reconfigure the virtual machine's network to work directly on the lab network rather VirtualBox's virtual NAT.)

To do this assignment, you will need to download the following ISOs from one of the CentOS repositories:

CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-1of6.iso
CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-2of6.iso
CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-3of6.iso
CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-4of6.iso
CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-5of6.iso
CentOS-5.3-i386-bin-6of6.iso

(I noticed from the last assignment that some of you already have these files, so I suggest reusing those rather than re-downloading.)

Please put these in a directory called /home/exports. Then NFS export that directory (chapter 16 of LAH.)

I would suggest using wget to do these downloads using a bash loop — if you do so, this is just a one-liner but it will take a while to complete so it might be good idea to break away for a few hours to let this run unattended.

Next you will need to boot the other box using the #1 CentOS CDROM. I have put a number of these near the monitor that I use for the lecture, or you can burn one yourself. (The CDROMs that I made for this assignment have "Assign #4" written on them on the left-hand side.)

The key step to changing the CDROM's default install process from a CDROM install to a network install is to enter linux askmethod at the very first prompt. (You only have a limited amount of time before there is a timeout and a default install starts.)

Once you do that, you will be asked for the network information for the NFS server which will provide the installation media. Specify your Fedora 10 (or virtual machine, if you went that route) ip address and /home/exports as the NFS directory.

I have left out one critical step and one step that may (or may not) be critical. These shouldn't be too much of a stumbling block, but if you get stuck, please come by my office hours on Wednesday for help.



A journal is due for this assignment. Make sure that you document in your journal all of the steps that you went through, following the guidelines on the class home page. For this assignment, please document what you did for the additional steps mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Please share the workload so that all team members get experience with all aspects of the work. PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO PUT YOUR TEAM NUMBER ON THE ASSIGNMENT. Please turn in a printed copy of this assignment at the beginning of class on Thursday, June 18th.