OES Autoyast AID - Version 1.01 for OES SP2

What is Autoyast?

Autoyast is a way to install OES Linux in automated fashion. You
specify the install parameters in an XML script and kick off the
install and depending on your network or cd speed, you have a server in about a half hour.
That is assuming you made no mistakes in the XML file.

If you are familiar
with a NetWare response file install, you could say an AutoYast install
is a similar thing for SUSE\OES Linux installs. The nice thing about
NetWare was it created a response file on the server
(sys:\ni\data\response.rsp) that you could use to clone your system.
This is not done with OES Linux. With the next version of OES there
should be a similar feature, but for now (OES1 sp2) you must write the
XML file from scratch or use the Auto Installation tool available in
YaST under the MISC heading.

To create an autoyast profile for OES
using this Autoyast tool requires a bit of a learning curve and you
must follow the documentation exactly and make sure you don't forget to
add a mandatory component.

Note - SLES9 does have a "clone" feature as part of the AutoInstallation
tool, but the OES products still have to be configured after the SLES9 cloning is done.

What is this tool used for?

• This tool is good for creating an Autoyast XML Profile (like a
  NetWare response file) that includes your customized edir and network
  information, and should work on almost any x86 hardware. You may find
  the script does not include everything you want, and of course you can
  add to it quite easily, simply by modifying the base.xml file and the
  ayoes.sh file.

• The base.xml is an autoyast profile that installs the default OES
  components. With the tool, you run ayoes.sh script on a linux box and
  it does a search and replace, adding your specific network and
  eDirectory information written out to final.xml.

Other Uses -

• You may have created your own Autoyast XML profile using the
  AutoInstallation tool (YaST \ MISC), but you find it doesn't work.
  When you are finished you can compare what you created to base.xml and
  see if you are missing anything that looks mandatory (like CA
  configuration or root password). Also check for syntax errors.

How to use the tool.

Copy down the files ayoes.sh and base.xml to a linux box.
Give appropriate rights to the files (IE - chmod 755 ayoes.sh).
(optional) You can modify the default parameters in ayoes.sh (they
appear at the top).

Run ayoes.sh. It will create final.xml.

Copy final.xml to a floppy or to a network accessible share.
During the OES boot screen enter the following parameters (along with
hitting F3 and specifying your OES installation source files) -
autoyast=floppy:///final.xml

or

autoyast=nfs://IPaddress/share/final.xml

How does the script work?

The base.xml file has several parameters that start and end with @@
that are searched and replaced by the parameters that are entered in
the ayoes.sh script.

The script first sets the default parameters. If a question asked by
the script is given no input the default parameters will be used. After
the questions are asked and data is input in the variables, then the
sed commands at the bottom of the script do the search and replacing.

Customization — You can remove products from being installed by simply
removing the XML data from the XML file.

For example you will notice Virtual Office was taken out of the script
by simply remarking out

Also you will see the VO package remarked out -

You can also add Products. I wanted to install "iscsi" as a default
product so you will notice I added this line near the end of the
base.xml file.

For Novell OES Products you will need to go to the AutoInstallation
tool, create a reference profile, then add the product in the software
selection, and configure it. Then see what XML data was added to the
reference profile and copy and paste it into the base.xml file.
You of course can also modify the ayoes.sh script to add other things
that my need searched and replaced.

Encrypting the root users password -

By default this script is using a clear text password for the root user, which will appear in
the /var/log/YaST2/y2log. To change this you could change the base.xml
user encrypted value to true (see below) and then put in the encrypted password. You
can get the encrypted password by configuring the root user in the AutoInstallation
tool and copying and pasting the <user_password> data into the final.xml file.

Version 1.01 – added bash script in base.xml to cleanup passwords.