Re: initialization package for a new server?

[Thomas Luzat <thomas@luzat.com>]

Hi Peter!

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 6:06 AM, Peter Michaux <petermichaux@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to automate the creation of a new web server as much as
> possible. It would seem ideal if I do not have to edit any files at
> all but rather only install packages. I have my own simple APT
> repository accessible via SSH but the new server must first be
> configured to know about that simple APT repository. Is it a good
> approach to make a "initialization" .deb package with the following
> files

You can do that. I would not necessarily recommend that, but it's
comparatively simple.

> Or is there another way I should prepare a server?

There are a number of things that can help automate creation:

1. Netboot the machine. You won't even need any media in that case.
See: https://wiki.debian.org/PXEBootInstall

2. Preseed the installer's questions. See
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed and follow the links.
This does allow you to preinstall additional packages, too. You can
also add additional lines to sources.list and include scripts. You
could use that to install your package or to create additional files.
But you could also:

3. Use provisioning software which configures your system according to
"recipes". Two popular choices (but not the only ones) are:

Chef: http://www.getchef.com/chef/
Puppet: http://puppetlabs.com/

Both can be installed and preconfigured using preseeding to either
access a server or local configuration (which you somehow get onto the
server) to provide the system with information about what additional
steps to take (say, install and configure apache/nginx). Provisioning
software may be overkill, but could very well help you in the long
run. If you're not doing much more than what you've described I'd
mainly look into using preseeding alone.

Cheers,

Thomas Luzat

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