SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server 12
Release Notes #
These release notes are valid for all SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server 12 components. Some parts may not apply to a particular component.
If installed, documentation is available under the /usr/share/doc/ directory of an installed system. The
latest documentation can also be found online at http://www.suse.com/documentation/slepos11/.
1 SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server #
The current version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 or SP4. This means that it can only build images for 32-bit devices based on the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 code stream. SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server 12 is a component for SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service which adds the ability to build terminal images for 64-bit devices based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 or SP3. This release does not replace any other component of SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service. For building images based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3 or SP4, it is necessary to run SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 11 Image Server.
2 Installation #
SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server 12 can be installed during the installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (or newer) or after the system has been installed. In either of the installation scenarios you will be asked to accept the EULA and enter the registration code.
To install SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server during the installation, select it from the list of extensions.
To deploy the SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server on an already installed system, start
the YaST module for registration. When prompted whether to select the
extensions or register again, choose the Select Extensions
option and select SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server from the list of the available extensions.
Since SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server 12 is an addition to existing deployments and the first version of this product, there is no an upgrade path.
In both installation scenarios, make sure that the SLEPOS Image Server is installed. Also, install either Template-Minimal or Template-Graphical templates (or both) if you plan to build images based on the provided templates.
Security note: Make sure to enable a strong encryption method like WPA2 when deploying SLEPOS on your systems over Wi-Fi or use Wi-Fi to access the repositories for building images.
3 Building images based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 or SP3 #
The images based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 11 SP3 can only be built with KIWI. Other methods are not supported. The Image Creator YaST module for building images is not available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Server 12. To learn more about building images with KIWI, refer to the "Building Images with KIWI" chapter of the documentation or to general KIWI documentation included in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.
In order to ease the management of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service terminals, the
product repository contains the packages salt and
salt-minions along with their dependencies. To manage the
terminals with Salt, include the packages in the images. These packages are not part of
default templates.
To manage the terminals with SUSE Manager, you need to include the relevant packages from the SUSE Manager repostiories. Refer to the documentation for SUSE Manager to further info.
If you are using a SMT server to mirror the packages that you use
to build the images, make sure to mirror the SLE-POS12-SP2-Pool and SLE-POS12-SP2-Updates repositories.
4 Using SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 or SP3 based images #
Before using SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 12 images, make sure that all released maintenance updates of SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 11 SP3 are applied to your Administration and Branch servers.
Since no special configuration is needed for branches which use only 64-bit images based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 (or only 32-bit images based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11), refer to the documentation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 11 SP3.
4.1 Mixed Branches #
For booting in mixed branches, the configuration is the same as described in the documentation in chapter "Deploying Boot Images with a New Kernel Version".
"default"
scDistributionContainer is used for booting unknown
terminals for the first time. It should contain 32-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 kernel
that is able to boot all systems, 32-bit as well as 64-bit.
If the terminal cannot boot the default 32-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 image, or
if it does not initialize the hardware properly (for example because
the network card is not supported by SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 kernel and requires a
newer kernel shipped in SUSE Linux Enterprise 12), it can boot a special image from USB
for the first time. The process is the same as documented for the setup
for wireless terminals (see section "Creating Images for Wireless
Setup"), and can be done using the following commands (where
minimal-3.4.0 is an example of image that will be
able to bood the machine, choose your own image name instead):
cd /var/lib/SLEPOS/system/images/minimal-3.4.0 kiwi --bootusb initrd-netboot-suse-SLES12.x86_64-2.1.1.splash.gz
Alternatively, it is possible to manually create a scWorkstation entry in LDAP before booting a terminal for
the first time. The scWorkstation entry must point
to the 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 image in non-default scDistributionContainer. This is discussed in bsc#1011372,
the exact commands are not yet finalized.
4.2 Booting System Images with Kexec #
Booting SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 system images via kexec from a SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 boot image is not possible. The reason is that SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 boot images cannot generate initrd and boot configuration for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 systems.
4.3 Kernel boot parameters #
The SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 kernel may need different arguments than the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 kernel (for more details, see bsc#1007905). In mixed branches the arguments can be added to a particular image as "scPxeFileTemplate" object.