Re: remote install on 100+ workstations?
On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 02:46:48PM -0800, Chris Majewski wrote:
> The computer science department at my university has many Linux
> boxes. Say, on the order of 100. Almost all these boxes run
> RedHat (not Debian, but read on).
>
> I don't like RedHat that much: for example, RedHat 7.0 ships
> with broken kernel headers, an unreleased and unsupported version of
> the gcc compiler, and a glibc version on which gcc will only compile
> after applying patches (these patches complicate life by changing, in
> an architecture-dependent way, header files which get put in
> architecture-independent places).
And of course RPM's quickly become a pain in the ass.
> I would like to investigate replacing RedHat with Debian.
>
> The current rationale for using RedHat is that there exists a
> mechanism for installing/upgrading many RedHat boxes, in a customized
> way, over the network. This mechanism is called "kickstart". I don't
> know much about it. I don't know if a similar mechanism exists for
> Debian. However, I suspect that it does.
See http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
Dunno how well it works, since I haven't used it.
> My question, then, is this: does anyone have (or know of) a mechanism
> which will allow us to install Debian remotely on a hundred+ boxes,
> including department-specific customizations, such as patches and
> non-Debian files? Given that we are a research environment,
> administered by some pretty clueful people, our linux installations
> will necessarily be very customized. So something like 'apt-get', by
> itself, is not good enough as I know it.
Actually, once past the install phase, apt-get and things like debhelper
should be sufficient. :)
Set up your own repository containing the things that you want. Instead
of (or in addition to) the 'main/contrib/non-free', make directories for
'webservers', 'develboxes', 'testing' or whatever, where you put in
your toys. The machines pointing to 'develboxes', for example, would
get a copy of perl with all the debugging stuff turned on, while the
webservers would get a normal one, perhaps with some superduper
optimizing turned on. The 'testing' is for the bleeding edge folks
who can expect things to break, or you could do that by creating a
seperate 'distribution' for them much like Debian proper does. How
you break things up depends on your needs.
One of the beauties of Debian is that it is very easy to adapt into your
own distribution .... and if done right you can do it without breaking
compatibility with regular Debian.
--
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