RalfGesellensetter wrote:
you can make a debian mirror from the dvd, or use squid or approx to reduce bandwith needs.Dear list, one of my computer labs consists of 15 workstations that - do dual boot (w2k + slx 2-pre) - are (partly) protected by some hardware protector - thus use /dev/hda5 as only linux filesystem (ext3) and lilo as boot manager (installed to /dev/hda1 which contains as extended partition hda5) Upgrading to Etch (SLX 3.0) is due, now. I see 2.5 ways to do so: 1. aptitude/apt-get dist-upgrade 2. re-install (while hoping that MBR is kept/adaptable) 2.5 replace by diskless client option.Today, I started trying option 1. according to http://wiki.skolelinux.no/DebianEdu/Documentation/Etch/UpgradesThis path turned out to be - very slow (downloading hundreds of packages took nearly 2 hrs) - non-working (dependencies got broken as can be guessed from here:http://paste.debian.net/39847 - "840 upgraded, 408 newly installed, 73 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 1208MB of archives."- I even tried tasksel (which might be a hint), but I feel that upgrading the system without any Debian mirror is nonsense.
As for option 2, I wonder if there is any boot options to prevent Grub from being used? Does usplash work with lilo as well? The boot loader needs to fit to one sector, I am afraid.any boot option you set might be reset by the preseeding, you can try to chaneg the preseeding files default.* before selecting a profile. they use the regular preseeding values. examples for lilo and grub are in http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/example-preseed.txt
As for option 3, I now installed a 2nd LTSP server (Etch). However, I don't have a combo-Server, and my Tjener is one year old (Sarge). Now I wonder what network topology could be used to support both systems on those machines: w2k via Samba (10.0.x.x) and diskless 'lowfat' clients.On our windows/diskless dualboot machines, we have a list of mac addresses on the dhcp on tjener, those that are in that list get tftp information to pxelinux from the diskless server. The diskless server display a pxelinux meny with the choise of local harddrive windows and diskless workstation.I remember some posting that it is possible sticking DHCP services to my Tjener, but providing tftp/pxe boot (on demand) from another machine. Any howtos available?Cheers Ralf
Ronny