Debian Installation CD/ReiserFS
Hi,
I have been mucking with Debian CD's for a while now, as well as with
Debian
installation. I played with and produced a number of custom versions of
ReiserFS
based floppies.
Alas, none really give a proper answer to a number of rather, in my
environment,
burning issues. FAI comes closest but is very clumsy and cumbersome, if
quite a
bit more flexible in the long run.
My primary concern, currently, is an installation of multiple
Debian-based
machines, _with_ reiserfs and _without_ adult supervision. I.e., it
could (and,
hopefully, will) be used by someone in the Israeli Parliament. Since
most members
of that unesteemed parliament cannot count their own toes withou...
never
mind, I digress.
Requirements, therefore, are (A):
1. Kernel 2.4.x
2. ReiserFS
3. Unattended install to a fully functional machine
4. Network configuration of ADDRESS and HOSTNAME
5. Work on any hardware
6. CD-ROM-based
Nice to have are (B):
1. Ask NO question
2. Not too large
3. Thinks for itself (see below)
Currently, I have a sid, reiserfs and 2.4.5-based CD that fulfills:
A1, A2, A3, A4, A6, B1, B2
A5 is close. It probably does NOT work on laptops and really old
machines, but anything PCI-based should be pretty much OK. This
includes ALL weird PCI-based RAID cards supported by Linux. And
it really ask NO questions, just chugs along.
B3 is, likewise, close. The thing partitiones the first disk it
encounters.
It partitiones it into a set of reasonably sized chunks (/, /usr, /var
and /tmp)
and installs LILO. Currently that is the ONLY thing it does. I shall be
making it somewhat smarter.
B2 is 50MB for a FULLY functional Debian GNU/Linux system,
updated as of today in the morning, UTC-3.
I can put it on my web site, but I only have an ADSL line with a 64k
uplink. Is there anyone willing to donate bandwidth for it? I am willing
to build custom versions, too ;-).
Cheerio!
Marc A. Volovic
marc@bard.org.il
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