Re: Configuring 100 identical Debian Laptops
On Tuesday 30 January 2001 05:57, Nathan Bockrath wrote:
> I have this lovely task of configuring a large number of identical laptops,
> and I am hoping that someone knows a way to do the install without running
> through the gazillion dialog boxes on each one. Basically, the only
> difference on each laptop is the IP address and the Hostname, all the other
> configuration info should be the same. I just do not want to do this
> install one by one...
>
> Has anybody done this? If so, please enlighten me...
The problem with network installs is that laptops have slow network
connections. If you get a recent model high-end laptop and a new/good
CardBus Ethernet card then you can get 8MB/s at the cost of most of your CPU
time.
For that number I suggest using adapters to put the laptop drives in a
desktop machine. However I suggest the following proceedure:
Install the first machine with all required software.
# this fills all unused space with zeros - easily compressed
cat /dev/zero > /foo ; rm /foo
Then do gzip -9 < /dev/hdb > file.gz
Then for each hard drive do zcat file.gz > /dev/hdb
Where /dev/hdb is the laptop drive mounted in a desktop.
Gzipping usually helps because most machines have slow IO and fast CPUs.
To make the OS notice the new partitioning do:
echo w | fdisk /dev/hdb
(should work, I haven't tried it - may need to use expect).
Then use sed to change the IP addresses, names, etc. It should be easy to
write a script to mount the new file system, run sed on the files, and umount
it.
Good luck!
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