BitFolk » Panel

A netboot installer is now available from the Xen Shell for Debian Lenny if you are on the following servers:

barbar
cosmo
corona

While this is obviously not a feature of the web panel, it is a means by which customers can reinstall their VPS themselves.

The process is almost identical to a normal Debian netboot install. The few important differences are described here:

https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Using_the_self-serve_net_installer

This is in the process of being rolled out to all servers in the next couple of days.

After that, Debian Squeeze will be added, then hopefully Ubuntu and CentOS.

The web panel feature for this will build on this work.

Customers on curacao now also have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer.

Customers on kahlua now also have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer.

I have discovered that there is no way to make the Debian netboot installer work for a certain style of legacy VPS configuration and no way to fix that without changes on the customer side, so we will have to disable install feature for those customers. This is unfortunately quite a large number of customers, but there is no way to make the changes in the customer's VPS without support interaction.

It may at a later time be worth making it rewrite the customer's VPS config at the point they have consented to an install, since after this point their VPS has been nuked anyway and there is no existing config to worry about. Right now though I want to get this feature available for all the customers set up since 2009-ish.

Customers on obstler now also have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer.

Customers on faustino now also have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer.

Customers on urquell now also have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer.

Customers on kwak now also have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer.

All customers should now have access to the Debian lenny netboot installer, unless made impossible by legacy VPS configuration.

Debian squeeze works now as well.

Ubuntu Lucid added. No apparent issues.

CentOS 5 installer now available.

The CentOS installer has thrown up some issues of disk layout which have been discussed on the users list:

http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20101224.144158.626cab6a.en.html

Basically up until recently the standard disk layout for a BtFolk VPS was a single disk device (xvda) with a filesystem directly on it. This was done for maximum simplicity and ease of later resizing. The Debian and Ubuntu network installers weren't very happy with this method, but it was possible to force them to accept it.

Unfortunately it is not possible to force the CentOS (Red Hat) installer to accept this.

Rather than delay in making the CentOS installer available, I have decided to standardise upon a new disk layout as suggested by Andy Bennett in the above email thread:

• xvda First disk
  • xvda1 First partition, ext3, contains / and /boot
• xvdb Second disk
  • xvdb1 First partition, swap

Restricting the layout to one partition per disk device doesn't make resizing very much more difficult and has the advantage that all installers should work without needing any tricks.

I am in the process of adding a disk management feature to the Xen Shell (#51) so that customers with a disk layout not meeting the above standard will be able to convert to it before performing an install. This should allow all customers to make use of the installers without having to contact support first.