Introduction

All of the documented kernel boot parameters plus those below may be used during the installation. All the parameters can be appended to the kernel boot parameters in /etc/systemimager/pxelinux.cfg/syslinux.cfg on your image server.

Note that ALL kernel parameters listed below are CASE SENSITIVE, and that a trailing = on the name of any parameter states that that parameter will be entered as an environment variable, whereas its absence indicates that it will appear as a kernel argument readable via /proc/cmdline by programs running once the system is up. The number of kernel parameters is not limited, but the length of the complete command line (parameters including spaces etc.) is limited to a fixed number of characters. This limit depends on the architecture and is between 256 and 4096 characters. It is defined in the file ./include/asm/setup.h as COMMAND_LINE_SIZE

HOSTNAME=hostname

Set the hostname of the client to hostname. DOMAINNAME=domainname Set the domain of the client to domainname. DEVICE=ethi Set the management interface of the client to ethi. The client will contact the image server on that interface. Starting from SystemImager 3.8.1 this parameter can be used also to force the execution of the DHCP client only on a single interface (default is to try with all the available interface on the client). IPADDR=x.x.x.x Set the IP address of the client to x.x.x.x. NETMASK=x.x.x.x Set the netmask of the client to x.x.x.x. NETWORK=x.x.x.x Set the network address of the client to x.x.x.x. BROADCAST=x.x.x.x Set the broadcast address of the client to x.x.x.x. GATEWAY=gateway Use the default gateway gateway. GATEWAYDEV=gatewaydev Use gatewaydev as the default gateway interface. ETHER_SLEEP=sec Give the switch time to start passing packets. Some switches won't forward packets until 30 seconds or so after an interface comes up. This means the DHCP server won't even get the request for 30 seconds. Set this parameter if your client doesn't seem to receive the DHCPOFFER from the DHCP server. Default is: 0. IMAGESERVER=imageserver Use the image server imageserver to download the image on the client. IMAGENAME=imagename Install the image imagename on the client. LOG_SERVER=logserver Use logserver as the log server. Remember to configure syslog on that host to accept remote logs and configure the firewall to accept connections on the port 514/UDP. LOG_SERVER_PORT=port Use the UDP port port to send log to the log server, instead of using the default port 514/UDP. Remember to configure the firewall on your log server to accept connections on port port/UDP. TMPFS_STAGING=yes|no If TMPFS_STAGING is set to yes the image will be downloaded in the RAM of the clients and after the download synchronized in the disk of the clients. This can speed-up installation time, since there is no disk overhead during the download of the image (that in general is the most time consuming step of the whole installation), but you need a lot of RAM in the clients (at least an amount of RAM strictly greater than the size of the image + a breathing room of ~100MB). Default is: no. SCRIPTNAME=script This parameter can be specified to force the use of the autoinstallation script script. If it is not specified (and, in general, this is the case) the first script found from the followings is taken: IMAGENAME.master (if IMAGENAME is defined in the installation parameters) HOSTNAME.sh BASE_HOSTNAME.master (e.g. if you have from node001 to node100 the BASE_HOSTNAME is node) You can play with your autoinstall scripts, create symlinks, etc. in /var/lib/systemimager/scripts on your image server. SSH=y|n Enable the SSH transport if SSH=y. See SSH for more details. This option is only available in version 3.8.0 and above. Default is: n SSHD=y|n If SSHD=y a SSH daemon is started on the imaging client. By default only passwordless login are allowed (via /root/.ssh/authorized_keys). This option is only available in version 3.8.0 and above. SSH_USER=user Use the user user to download the image via a SSH tunnel from the image server. See SSH for more details. SSH_DOWNLOAD_URL Use the url ​http://url to download the BOEL binaries tarball and the authorized_keys to install via SSH tunnel. See SSH for more details. FLAMETHROWER_DIRECTORY_PORTBASE=port Enable the flamethrower transport on the client and use port port/UDP to push data to the clients. Default is: 9000. MONITOR_SERVER=monitorserver Enable Monitoring feature and use monitorserver as monitor server. See Monitoring for more details. MONITOR_PORT=port Use the port port/TCP to send client informations to the monitor server. See Monitoring for more details. Default is: 8181. MONITOR_CONSOLE=yes|no If set to yes enable full console view. When full console is enabled it's possible to follow all the installation session of the clients (stdout and stderr). See Monitoring for more details. Default is: no. BITTORRENT=y|n If set to y use the BitTorrent transport (recommended if you need to install a huge amount of clients). See BitTorrent for more details. Default is: n. BITTORRENT_STAGING=dir Download the image BitTorrent tarball in the directory dir. See BitTorrent for more details. Default: if not set autodetect the best staging directory. BITTORRENT_POLLING_TIME=num Number of seconds to poll for BitTorrent events. See BitTorrent for more details. Default is: 5sec. BITTORRENT_SEED_WAIT=y|n If set to y clients wait in seed-only state after every downloaded files using BitTorrent transport. The installation can continue only when the upload rate goes below the BITTORRENT_UPLOAD_MIN threshold. This option can be useful if the image server has a low upload bandwidth to the clients. See BitTorrent for more details. Default is: n. BITTORRENT_UPLOAD_MIN=num If BITTORRENT_SEED_WAIT=n this option is ignored. Otherwise num (in KB/s) is used as minimum upload threshold (see BITTORRENT_SEED_WAIT). See BitTorrent for more details. Default is: 50. SKIP_LOCAL_CFG=y|n If set to y skip the check of local.cfg. This can greatly speed up the installation of servers that do not correctly support (or do not have) floppy controllers. Default is: n.