debian in a lab

[pkn@cs.utexas.edu (Kay Nettle)]

Hi,

	We're planning on installing debian in a lab of about 50 machines 
and were wondering if anyone had come up with a good way to install it over
the net.  We want to spend as little time on each machine as possible.  
Each machine will be on the net.  We've thought of a couple of ways
to do this, like: creating a template machine and then stuffing the 
disk image on all the others, or just using the normal debian install (but
we're worried we'd have to spend to much time on each machine).

There are a couple of other questions we have as well.  Has anyone nfs 
mounted /usr and if so how do you handle updates to packages?  Also, what 
is the process for creating local packages that override standard 
packages?
 

Thanks,
Kay