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A fresh install of Debian 9 on an OVH Dedicated Server RISE-BF-1 - with no IPMI/KVM
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A fresh install of Debian 9 on an OVH Dedicated Server RISE-BF-1 - with no IPMI/KVM

Hello all,

I have been trying (unsuccessfully) for the past few weeks to get a fresh (non OVH) Debian 9 installed onto a dedicated server at OVH (specs are below), the server has no IPMI or KVM feature as it was a special Black Friday deal (nothing on the promotion mentioned that it did not have IPMI/KVM, that's another story).

Specs: RISE-BF-1 - Intel Xeon E5-1630v3 - RAM 64GB LEG - 4x HDD SATA 2TB Enterprise Class Soft RAID

My first query is that is this even possible? I recall reading somewhere that OVH no longer supports installations from mounted ISOs via their Rescue system.

If anyone has had any success with installing fresh Debian 9 on an OVH dedicated server without IPMI/KVM, I would be very glad to have your guidance/feedback.

I have tried multiple methods gleaned and scrapped from the web, my execution of them may absolutely be incorrect.

These were:

Using a virtual KVM install on the Rescue system, running a VM with the Debian ISO attached and VNC etc...

Using debootstrap (this really confused me..., my first experience with chroot)

Installing Debian on a physical Dell PER620 with one HDD and then booting with Debian Live and dd the disk to the OVH server.

As there is no IPMI/KVM feature on the server, I can not see what is going on during the boot process. I have done my best to ensure the network settings are correct. But the issue may be related to grub etc...

Thank you all in advance for reading this post in any event.

Comments

  • marvelmarvel Member
    edited February 2020

    I always use the OVH script, and choose install original kernel?

    You could also boot to rescue and install from there, although it's a bit more complicated.

  • @marvel said:
    I always use the OVH script, and choose install original kernel?

    You could also boot to rescue and install from there, although it's a bit more complicated.

    Thank you for your reply, that is what I have done now as I could not find a way to achieve the "fresh" install.

    One of my objectives was to ensure that there are no extra packages which the script/image from OVH may install.

    Do you have any reference material that you are willing to share for the install via "boot to rescue"?

  • zenithteq said: Using a virtual KVM install on the Rescue system, running a VM with the Debian ISO attached and VNC etc...

    I have done this many times on ovh servers to install proxmox.

  • marvelmarvel Member
    edited February 2020

    @zenithteq said:

    @marvel said:
    I always use the OVH script, and choose install original kernel?

    You could also boot to rescue and install from there, although it's a bit more complicated.

    Thank you for your reply, that is what I have done now as I could not find a way to achieve the "fresh" install.

    One of my objectives was to ensure that there are no extra packages which the script/image from OVH may install.

    Do you have any reference material that you are willing to share for the install via "boot to rescue"?

    Well I think I used this once: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.en.html

    But it's quite a process. Btw I got a Winter deal from OVH and I do have KVM. So it's just a lame excuse they don't give it to you.

    Thanked by 1zenithteq
  • @boernd said:

    zenithteq said: Using a virtual KVM install on the Rescue system, running a VM with the Debian ISO attached and VNC etc...

    I have done this many times on ovh servers to install proxmox.

    Below is my workflow and commands for installing Debian 9.11.0 (I have also tried the same with Proxmox 5.4-1) Is this similar to how you go about installing Proxmox?

    • Change the boot mode to "Boot in rescue mode", selecting "rescue64-pro" and reboot the server.

    • Once the server is ready under the "Rescue Mode" login via SSH with credentials received via email.

    • Remove any LVM/VG using vgchange -a n VGNAME & vgremove VGNAME

    • Stop/Remove any RAID using mdadm --stop /dev/mdX

    • Wipe all disks using for x in {a..d}; do dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd$x bs=1M count=1024 ; done

    • Run the following commands

    apt update && apt upgrade to update

    apt -y install qemu-system-x86 to install QEMU

    • Use wget to grab the required ISO to the /tmp folder:

    wget -P /tmp https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/9.11.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-9.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso

    MYISO=/tmp/debian-9.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso

    • Run the virtual KVM (vKVM) and boot from the ISO

    qemu-system-x86_64 -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::80-:80,hostfwd=tcp::443-:443 -m 2048M -localtime -enable-kvm -cpu kvm64,+nx -smp 2 -hda /dev/sda -vnc 127.0.0.1:0 -cdrom $MYISO -boot d

    • Connect using VNC via SSH tunnel to the vKVM

    • Install Debian 9 (normal install, no fancy stuff, selecting all default options, no Print Server, yes to SSH Server, yes to standard systems utilities)

    • Install is completed and I check the install by running the vKVM and booting from /dev/sda.

    qemu-system-x86_64 -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::80-:80,hostfwd=tcp::443-:443 -m 2048M -localtime -enable-kvm -cpu kvm64,+nx -smp 2 -hda /dev/sda -vnc 127.0.0.1:0

    • Debian 9 vKVM boots and I get the login prompt, I can login ok and all looks well.

    • Once done with the vKVM, I mount /dev/sda1 to make changes to /etc/network/interfaces to change the interface name (to eno1) and add the static IP information for my server. I choose eno1 as this is the interface that shows up in the Debian 9.4 install template from OVH.

    • Once the server is rebooted (selecting to boot from HD in the OVH Manager), I get nothing, no ping.... so I must be missing some steps after the OS is installed, such as making changes/updates to networking, grub, initramfs, fstab etc... I just don't know what....

    Thank you for your help....

  • @marvel said:

    Well I think I used this once: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.en.html

    But it's quite a process. Btw I got a Winter deal from OVH and I do have KVM. So it's just a lame excuse they don't give it to you.

    Yup the debootstrap really did mess with my head and I needed a few days away from the console...

    I did query the lack of KVM with OVH but they said as it was a cut price special offer, no KVM was included. Super lame...

    I will most likely dump this server and go get a cheap and good server from Hetzner where I can have a KVM on demand... and the cost will be less.

    Thank you anyhow, may work up some courage and give the debootstap "cross-install” method another shot.

    Thanked by 1Hetzner_OL
  • Just as an update, the only distribution I was able to install successfully was Proxmox 5 using the proxmox-ve_5.4-1.iso using the virtual KVM (vKVM) method.

  • zenithteq said: Once the server is rebooted (selecting to boot from HD in the OVH Manager), I get nothing, no ping....

    The reason for that is Debian installs with iptables set to nothing allowed inwards. Simply open port 80, plus all the other ports you will need.

  • DataIdeas-JoshDataIdeas-Josh Member, Patron Provider

    @dominame said:

    zenithteq said: Once the server is rebooted (selecting to boot from HD in the OVH Manager), I get nothing, no ping....

    The reason for that is Debian installs with iptables set to nothing allowed inwards. Simply open port 80, plus all the other ports you will need.

    proxmox runs 8006

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