Re: Network installation from a centralixed server

• Previous message: martin f krafft: "Re: On the verge of suicide:tar & gunzip problems"
• In reply to: Vijaya S: "Network installation from a centralixed server"
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Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:52:43 +0800
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

Vijaya S wrote:

>hi ,
>I was thinking of creating a server that holds all images of Linux
>distros with updated packages
>For ex: Debian (sarge)
> Debian (woody)
> Redhat
>And people should able to connect to it and download and instlal the
>images in few mintures rather than me installing on each machine
>
>Any tool that can be recommended for this?
>
>
>
>

The installers are different for each.

Red Hat is trivial. The CDs contain instructions for creating a suitable
structure for network installs, and the Red Hat documentation for
setting it up is very good.

Woody's standard installer is a pain and not to be recommended. You could
a) Take a look at www.progeny.com - somewhere in there they've ported
Anaconda to Debian, and Anaconda beats the new debian-installer hands down*
b) Take a look at FAI. FAI is a non-standard but highly customisable
installer of Debian. I don't think it comes close to Anaconda though.
FAI is a debian package.
c) Take a look at systemimager. It can install pretty much anything, and
has a companion package for configuring things.

Also, rather than create your own mirrors, consider configuring Squid as
a transparent proxy. Make sure it will cache pretty much all files.

What will happen is this:
First time someone installs a particular package, it's downloaded into
your Squid cache as it's served to the installer.
Second and subsequent times, it's served directly from the cache.

The advantage is that, instead of storing three ISOs of each RHL/Fedora
of interest, plus seven CDs of Woody and a dozen or so of Sarge, plus
Mandrake, SuSe etc if you support them too, you only store the files
people actually use.

* The new debian-installer doesn't do hands-off installs. Anaconda does.

-- 
Cheers
John
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• Previous message: martin f krafft: "Re: On the verge of suicide:tar & gunzip problems"
• In reply to: Vijaya S: "Network installation from a centralixed server"
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