SUMMARY: Jumpstart - complete

In the end we decided to use Jed and Markus as our guiding light. 
Instead of mconnect (Sun is not happy about our request) we can use
telnet to port 25 of our mailhost.  So the final version looks something
like:

telnet mailhost 25 << EOF
helo localhost
mail from: root@localhost
rcpt to: admin@localhost
data
Subject: Starting Jumpstart for client `hostname`

.
EOF

telnet exists in mini-root/usr/bin (thanks for the idea Markus).
So simple really......

~JK

Jeff Kennedy wrote:
> 
> Thanks to:
> Darren Dunham                   Jed Dobson                     
> Graham Wood                     Kevin Amorin
> Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr         Bertrand_Hutin
> Ed Schernau                     Paul Greidanus
> Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr
>
> The suggestion by Jed and Bertrand is what we are looking for -
> mconnect.  Jed even wrote a little example script, thanks Jed.  Do a
> 'man mconnect' and see what I mean.  I didn't even know it existed.  The
> only problem is that it doesn't exist in the mini-root and it's
> dynamiclly linked.  So we are going to talk to Sun and see if we can get
> a staticly linked copy that we can throw in the mini-root (unless of
> course someone has a better idea...).
> 
> The ever-popular tcpwrappers also came in by Jed, which is a probability
> since we intend to install these on our machines anyway for security.
> Why not use it for this as well?  We may very well do just that.
> 
> Paul suggested netcat as a possibility.  I think this deserves some
> attention as it seems like a good tool.  Originally it was thought to
> use this from the client side but a brief perusal of the readme showed
> it also being used in server mode.  I like this idea better.  We will
> look into this even if the static mconnect comes through as it could be
> used for more than this.
> 
> The next one in line is to run in.rarpd and rpc.bootparamd in debug mode
> and see what we get.  Chances are it would work and not be too noisy
> since not much in our network uses bootp.  However, it is not as elegant
> or simple as mconnect (providing we can get a binary in mini-root of
> course) nor as versatile as netcat appears to be.
> 
> Some people were wondering why a begin script wouldn't work.  Mainly
> because (outside of mconnect) you don't have much to work with from the
> client side, you're dependant on what's in the mini-root (if you're even
> willing to wait that long) and that's mounted read-only anyway so forget
> spooling.  Also, I want to be notified when a client starts a
> jumpstart.  When does a jumpstart really begin?  Good question since, as
> Darren pointed out, it uses many technologies.  For us it begins
> anywhere before the nfs mount of the mini-root; pick a technology, any
> technology....  We want to be notifed from the beginning since interns
> are the ones that actually start the jumpstarts with 'boot net -
> install'.
> 
> ~JK
> 
> Jeff Kennedy wrote:
> >
> > We want to be notified via e-mail when a client starts a jumpstart and
> > when it finishes.  The finish part is easy; finish script.  But the
> > begin part is more difficult since you can't run it in a begin script as
> > sendmail doesn't exist yet.  One idea was load the mini-root and use
> > it's sendmail to fire one off but the problem is that the mini-root is
> > mounted read-only, which means the spooler queue is also read-only,
> > hence no mail again.
> >
> > Another option was server side notification; write a wrapper for tftp in
> > inetd.conf.  Maybe, but someone else suggested a listen daemon that
> > listens on the port and captures information.  This would be enough to
> > figure out which client was requesting the jumpstart and could be
> > multi-purpose, unlike the tftp wrapper.
> >
> > Does anyone out there have a mechanism to be notified when a client
> > *starts* a jumpstart?  I'm talking at the IP request or sooner, during
> > the actual process is too late for us.  The ultimate goal is to know
> > when a client starts so we know to expect a notification of completion.
> > That way we know for sure the client finished his jumpstart correctly,
> > no hiccups.  If we don't get a start notification at the IP level or
> > sooner, it's possible that a client could barf before we even know it's
> > trying.
> >
> > Thanks.
-- 
=====================
Jeff Kennedy
Unix Administrator
AMCC
jlkennedy@amcc.com
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