Importing distros¶

Fetching harness packages¶

The first time you import a new distro family you will need to run beaker-repo-update on the server to populate the harness repo for the new distro family. See beaker-repo-update for more details.

If the distro family is not currently supported by Beaker (for example, if it is a derivative of Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux with a different name) you can instead create a symlink for the harness repo, pointing at an existing compatible distro family:

ln -s RedHatEnterpriseLinux6 /var/www/beaker/harness/MyCustomDistro6

Install options for distro features¶

Beaker uses a number of kickstart metadata variables to determine which features are supported by the distro, in order to generate valid kickstarts and scripts when provisioning.

If the distro is supported by Beaker, the distro family will be recognised by name and the correct install options will be automatically populated. In this case you do not need to explicitly set them. Beaker will generate valid kickstarts without any further intervention.

However, if Beaker does not recognize the distro, it will be assumed to have all the latest features (essentially equivalent to the latest Fedora release). If necessary, you can use the OS versions page to set install options for the distro family.

For example, if you import a custom distro based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, you should set the following kickstart metadata variables on your custom distro family. This indicates that the distro does not use systemd or chrony, and that the installer does not support autopart --type or bootloader --leavebootorder.

!has_systemd !has_chrony !has_autopart_type !has_leavebootorder

Automated jobs for new distros¶

Beaker has a facility for running scripts whenever a new distro is imported, provided by the beaker-lab-controller-addDistro package. After installing that package, scripts placed in the /var/lib/beaker/addDistro.d directory will be run each time a distro is imported.

Beaker ships with a script, /var/lib/beaker/addDistro.d/updateDistro, which schedules a Beaker job to test installation of the new distro and tags it with STABLE if the job completes without error. Use this as a guide for creating more specific jobs that you might find useful.

Generating a boot menu¶

Beaker includes a command, beaker-pxemenu, which can be run on the lab controller to generate a boot menu containing the distros in Beaker. Users in the lab can then perform manual installations by selecting a distro from the menu. Boot menus are generated for menu.c32 (PXELINUX), EFI GRUB, 64-bit ARM and 64-bit PowerPC.

You can limit the menu to only contain distros tagged in Beaker with a certain tag, by passing the --tag option to beaker-pxemenu. By default, all distros which are available in the lab are included in the menu.

If you are using a boot menu, you should edit the PXELINUX default configuration pxelinux.cfg/default to boot from local disk by default, with an option to load the menu. For example:

default local
prompt 1
timeout 200

say ***********************************************
say Press ENTER to boot from local disk
say Type "menu" at boot prompt to view install menu
say ***********************************************

label local
    localboot 0

label menu
    kernel menu.c32
    append pxelinux.cfg/beaker_menu

Similarly, you should edit the default configuration for 64-bit ARM aarch64/grub.cfg to exit after a timeout, with an option to load the menu. For example:

set default="Exit PXE"
set timeout=10
menuentry "Exit PXE" {
    exit
}
menuentry "Install distro from Beaker" {
    configfile aarch64/beaker_menu.cfg
}

If you are using GRUB2 boot menus, you should edit the default configuration for x86 EFI boot/grub2/grub.cfg to exit after a timeout, with an option to load the menus. For example:

set default="Exit PXE"
set timeout=60
menuentry "Exit PXE" {
    exit
}
menuentry "Install distro from Beaker (x86)" {
    configfile boot/grub2/beaker_menu_x86.cfg
}

Likewise, you should edit the default configuration for iPXE :file:’ipxe/default‘ to exit after a timeout with an option to load the menu. Also, iPXE will not load the host specific script by default like PXELINUX, so we direct it to do that in the default script if available, for example:

#!ipxe

chain /ipxe/${ip:hexraw} || prompt –key m –timeout 60000 Press ‘m’ to view install menu, any other key to boot from local disk && set beaker 1 || clear beaker isset ${beaker} && chain /ipxe/beaker_menu || iseq ${builtin/platform} pcbios && sanboot –no-describe –drive 0x80 || exit 1

If your site imports distros into Beaker infrequently, you may prefer to run beaker-pxemenu after importing new distros. Otherwise, you can create a cron job to periodically update the PXE menu:

#!/bin/sh
exec beaker-pxemenu --quiet