shared debian installations

[Jeppe Sigbrandt <jay@elec.gla.ac.uk>]

Hiya,

Currently have access to 2 machines.
My box is 486DX266 with 16 MB RAM and box-2 is same except 8 MB RAM.
Both have 400 MB Hard disks.

This is my plan:
Setup box-2 with debian whilst avoiding as much duplication
as possible between the two machines.

Setup box-2 with NIS to our central services so that it will 
be useful to other people as an x-terminal.  I don't use NIS on my own 
machine since it is slow.

Be able to make use of spare resources on box-2.  Ideally I would
like the hard-drive to be kept as empty as possible (maybe even pretend
it is a diskless machine)

Currently, I have installed more or less the same programs on both
machines using dselect.  /usr is exported from my machine and what
used to be /usr in box-2 is now no longer mounted.  In due course
(when box-2 proves itself stable) I will delete its local /usr and
rely solely on the mounted version.  What I'm wondering is how will
it then be possible to upgrade/deinstall with dselect ?

There seems to be no standard way of installing solely local software 
on box-2.  If I create a /local hierchy and put the software there, 
how would I ensure that area is checked on boot-up? (man init reports 
that init sets its path to /bin:/usr/bin: )

One alternative is to do "dpkg --unpack whatever.deb" on my machine and 
set its status flag to "hold" using dselect.  This at least ensures the 
binaries are available to box-2 whilst not forcing my machine to use 
them. 

Any alternative strategies? (especially Re: (de)install once /usr is rm'd)?

Regards,
jay

(I have been thinking about making box-2 diskless, but it seems that
this would introduce too much trouble for the very small gain
of an extra 20 MB on the hard disk.  Configuration would be easier,
since it'd only have to be done once on my box, but conversely, I 
wouldn't be able to use box-2 as an experimental platform for playing
with new software)


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