RBFS Manual Installation

You can install open network Linux (ONL) manually on an OCP-compliant bare-metal switch. The Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) is an open-source utility that provides an installation environment for OCP-compliant bare-metal switches. ONIE is used to install different network operating systems (NOS) on a device.

ONIE provides several methods for locating a Network Operating System (NOS) installer image. Detailed information about these methods can be found in the ONIE User Guide. The RBFS ONL image can be installed using any of these methods.

When installing ONL, any existing configurations on the switch will be deleted.
The current RBFS configurations can be retrieved via a REST call from the RESTCONF endpoint. If you have saved the RBFS configuration using this method, you can load it onto the switch through a RESTCONF endpoint. For more information, refer to the following sections of the RtBrick documentation.
- Using the Proxy Endpoint
- RESTCONF API: Use Cases and Examples

Prerequisites for Manual Installation

Ensure that you have downloaded the RBFS ONL image as described in the RBFS Image Download section.
Provision the out-of-band management interface with an IP address either via DHCP or manual configuration (as described in Manual Configuration of the Management Interface IP).

Installing RBFS Using a USB Thumb Drive

This section describes how to install image using a USB thumb drive.

Prerequisites

Format the USB drive with the FAT32 file system format because we need to place the RBFS image on the root directory of the USB drive.
Ensure that you have downloaded the RBFS ONL image as described in the RBFS Image Download section.

Installation Procedure

You can also find instructions for installing via a USB thumb drive in the ONIE User Guide.

To install via USB, insert the USB drive to your computer and assume the USB drive appears as /dev/sda1 and is mounted at /media/rtbuser/4356-00B1 on Linux. This may vary depending on your system and operating system.

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1        29G   16K   29G   1% /media/rtbuser/4356-00B1

It is crucial to rename the RBFS ONL image to onie-installer, as ONIE only recognizes images with this name at the root of the USB drive.

To install via USB, simply copy the installer image (in this example, the image name is rtbrick-onl-installer-accessleaf-q2c-s9600-102xc-24.9.1-candidate.16.d) to the root directory of the USB thumb drive, as shown below:

$ cp rtbrick-onl-installer-accessleaf-q2c-s9600-102xc-24.9.1-candidate.16.d /media/rtbuser/4356-00B1/onie-installer

$ ls -al /media/rtbuser/4356-00B1/
total 1256820
drwxr-xr-x  2 rtbuser rtbuser      16384 Jan  1  1970 .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root     root           4096 Jan  9 11:49 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 rtbuser rtbuser 1286955159 Jan  9 11:49 onie-installer

Remove the USB drive from your computer and insert it into one of the USB ports on the front or rear panel of your ONIE-enabled device.
Insert the cable into the console port and connect to the console port of the device.
Power on the device and reboot it. ONIE will automatically detect the onie-installer file located at the root of the USB drive and execute it.

root@bl1-pod1:~# reboot

Wait for the device to show the "login:" prompt after installing the image. You can then log in and check the image version.

Manual Configuration of the Management Interface IP

If DHCP is not available, you need to manually configure the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway for the device’s management port while still logged in from its console port.

Identify the management port. Check the device documentation to determine which network interface is designated as the management interface (labeled "ma1").
Modify the ma1 interface network parameters by adding IP address, Netmask, and gateway using your preferred editor. The example below shows how to modify these parameters using the Vim editor.

supervisor@onl:/etc/network/interfaces.d $ vim ma1
auto ma1
iface ma1 inet static        <----- modify ma1 inet assignment as static
      address 192.0.2.187    <----- ma1 management interface ip address
      netmask 255.255.255.0  <----- subnet mask
      gateway 192.0.2.10     <----- configure gateway

Restart the networking service by disabling and enabling the ma1 interface, as shown in the example below. By default, the default route will point to the gateway IP address.

sudo ifdown ma1
sudo ifup ma1

Installing over the Network

For all network installation scenarios, ONIE expects the NOS installer image to be available on the network via HTTP.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have downloaded the RBFS ONL image as described in the RBFS Image Download section.
Ensure that you have set up an HTTP server that will make available the downloaded images for ONIE to use.

Installation Procedure

You can also find instructions for installing the ONL image over the network in the ONIE User Guide.

To install the ONL image over the network, perform the following steps:

On a fresh box, ONL prompt is not available, so skip to ONIE prompt section.

ONL prompt section:

Option 1: Manually select ONIE boot mode

Connect to the console port

Reboot the device

root@bl1-pod1:~# reboot

Once the selection menu appears as shown in the selection menu below, select "ONIE" and press enter.

                    GNU GRUB  version 2.02

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Open Network Linux                                                         |
|*ONIE   <----- Select this one                                              |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

      Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted.
      Press enter to boot the selected OS, `e' to edit the commands
      before booting or `c' for a command-line.

Select "ONIE: Install OS" from the next selection menu displayed.

                     GNU GRUB  version 2.02
 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 |*ONIE: Install OS   <----- Select this one                                  |
 | ONIE: Rescue                                                               |
 | ONIE: Uninstall OS                                                         |
 | ONIE: Update ONIE                                                          |
 | ONIE: Embed ONIE                                                           |
 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

      Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted.
      Press enter to boot the selected OS, `e' to edit the commands
      before booting or `c' for a command-line.

Wait for the "ONIE:/ #" prompt.

NOTICE: ONIE started in NOS install mode.  Install mode persists
NOTICE: until a NOS installer runs successfully.

** Installer Mode Enabled **
ONIE:/ #
ONIE:/ #
ONIE:/ #

Provide the URL of the ONL installer image location.

ONIE:/ # onie-nos-install http://server.example.net/_/images/latest/rtbrick-onl-ins
taller/rtbrick-onl-installer-spine-q2c-21.9.1.d

Wait until the device displays the "login:" prompt after the image upgrade completes. You can then log into the device and verify the image version.

Option 2: Preselect ONIE boot mode

Connect to the console port
Select ONIE boot mode

root@onl>bl1-pod1:~ # onl-onie-boot-mode --help
usage: onl-onie-boot-mode [-h] [--onie-only]
                          {install,rescue,uninstall,update,embed,diag,none}

positional arguments:
  {install,rescue,uninstall,update,embed,diag,none}

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --onie-only           Do not set ONIE boot menu option.
root@onl>bl1-pod1:~ #

root@onl>bl1-pod1:~ # onl-onie-boot-mode install
The system will boot into ONIE install mode at the next restart.
root@onl>bl1-pod1:~ #

To preselect ONIE boot mode, run the commands using sudo. For example, "sudo onl-onie-boot-mode install."

Reboot switch

root@onl>bl1-pod1:~ # reboot

ONIE prompt section:

You must update the URL of the ONL installer image location as per your specific HTTP server configuration.

ONIE:/ # onie-stop
discover: installer mode detected.
Stopping: discover... done.

ONIE:/ # onie-nos-install http://server.example.net/_/images/latest/rtbrick-onl-ins
taller/rtbrick-onl-installer-spine-q2c-21.9.1.d

discover: installer mode detected.
Stopping: discover... done.

Info: Attempting http://server.example.net/_/images/latest/rtbrick-onl-installer/rtbrick-onl-installer-spine-q2c-21.9.1.d ...

Connecting to server.example.net (198.51.100.125)
installer 100% |*******************************| 1176M 0:00:00 ETA

ONIE: Executing installer: http://server.example.net/_/images/latest/rtbrick-onl-installer/rtbrick-onl-installer-spine-q2c-21.9.1.d