Re: Need to clone machines efficiently - help?
Peter Eckersley wrote: On Mon, Dec 25, 2000 at 12:15:50AM -0800, Erik Winn wrote: Here is the first obstacle - not really a big one, but I spent all day digging around and couldn't really find any tools for this one: we want to be able to clone the machines easily over the local net. Mandrake has a tricky boot floppy that asks only for the eth0 config and then runs a bunch of perl to do the rest of the install non-interactively. I haven't started reading the scripts yet (that's plan B), instead I was hoping that someone had come up with something similar for debian. We are looking at hundreds of boxes already and its really just begun. This was extremely difficult for us at first, simply because the hardware we got was so variable that no standard install was really possible. There was one small shipment of machines with identical disks which we cloned using dd :). Things have got much better lately, since we started receiving corporate donations of largeish groups of modern PCs with similar hardware. The way we've ended up doing it is this: * A debian mirror server * Customised task packages So we start a normal debian install, but then pick task-computerbank-whatever and it's done. I've made the current version of our task packages apt-get'able if you want to have a look: deb http://thingy.apana.org.au/computerbank/debian cbv/ deb-src http://thingy.apana.org.au/computerbank/debian cbv/ They are mainly proof-of-concept at the moment and need considerable development, but they are already making life much easer for us. A custom task package might play really well with an automated installer, if your hardware is sufficiently uniform to support one. As someone else pointed out there's the FAI project at http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ We still have to evaluate it properly but looks like it could be a very useful package for us. Frank
Need to clone machines efficiently - help?
Hi Folks, I have just started working with a group here in Portland that is taking in old machines and recycling them - putting linux on as the OS (of course ;}). See http://www.freegeek.org for more. Its a non-profit all volunteer thing; and actually one of the people has posted to one of these lists before ... but, apparently things kinda (lamely, IMO) drifted toward a mandrake system -- I think I can turn that around with a little help; I am putting in some good time there and I think that when the realities of maintaining and upgrading rpm systems hits they may change their minds. Here is the first obstacle - not really a big one, but I spent all day digging around and couldn't really find any tools for this one: we want to be able to clone the machines easily over the local net. Mandrake has a tricky boot floppy that asks only for the eth0 config and then runs a bunch of perl to do the rest of the install non-interactively. I haven't started reading the scripts yet (that's plan B), instead I was hoping that someone had come up with something similar for debian. We are looking at hundreds of boxes already and its really just begun. This is really not a huge task - it would just make a nice splash over here if we could come up with something ... I would greatly appreciate recieving help/ideas/advice on this - Note however that I am not actually subscribed to the list at present (sorry, just too much at the moment ) so you can reply to me personally if you like. Thanks very much in advance! I hope we can get this to happen. Erik Winn
Re: Need to clone machines efficiently - help?
On Mon, Dec 25, 2000 at 12:15:50AM -0800, Erik Winn wrote: Here is the first obstacle - not really a big one, but I spent all day digging around and couldn't really find any tools for this one: we want to be able to clone the machines easily over the local net. boot floppy that asks only for the eth0 config and t While I was at VA, I worked with SystemImager, which is available at http://systemimager.org. It might be what you're looking for. It requires the hardware to be basically identical across machines. Once you set up the server, which is a significant task, cloning the master client onto the other clients is a cinch, involving putting the automatically-generated floppy disk into the disk drive and turning on the computer. I wrote a setup guide for SystemImager a few months ago. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost it :-(. pgpHhfTcfjTw0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Need to clone machines efficiently - help?
Hi Aaron, Thanks very much for the pointer - I'm reading the docs for it and it looks very promising. Might even be worth building a couple of debs from it ... no promises on that right now though :). Happy whicheveryouprefer! Erik Winn On Monday 25 December 2000 01:08, Aaron Lehmann wrote: On Mon, Dec 25, 2000 at 12:15:50AM -0800, Erik Winn wrote: Here is the first obstacle - not really a big one, but I spent all day digging around and couldn't really find any tools for this one: we want to be able to clone the machines easily over the local net. boot floppy that asks only for the eth0 config and t While I was at VA, I worked with SystemImager, which is available at http://systemimager.org. It might be what you're looking for. It requires the hardware to be basically identical across machines. Once you set up the server, which is a significant task, cloning the master client onto the other clients is a cinch, involving putting the automatically-generated floppy disk into the disk drive and turning on the computer. I wrote a setup guide for SystemImager a few months ago. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost it :-(. Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; charset=us-ascii; name=Attachment: 1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description:
Re: Need to clone machines efficiently - help?
Erik Winn wrote: Hi Folks, I have just started working with a group here in Portland that is taking in old machines and recycling them - putting linux on as the OS (of course ;}). See http://www.freegeek.org for more. Its a non-profit all volunteer thing; and actually one of the people has posted to one of these lists before ... but, apparently things kinda (lamely, IMO) drifted toward a mandrake system -- I think I can turn that around with a little help; I am putting in some good time there and I think that when the realities of maintaining and upgrading rpm systems hits they may change their minds. Here is the first obstacle - not really a big one, but I spent all day digging around and couldn't really find any tools for this one: we want to be able to clone the machines easily over the local net. Mandrake has a tricky boot floppy that asks only for the eth0 config and then runs a bunch of perl to do the rest of the install non-interactively. I haven't started reading the scripts yet (that's plan B), instead I was hoping that someone had come up with something similar for debian. We are looking at hundreds of boxes already and its really just begun. This is really not a huge task - it would just make a nice splash over here if we could come up with something ... I would greatly appreciate recieving help/ideas/advice on this - Note however that I am not actually subscribed to the list at present (sorry, just too much at the moment ) so you can reply to me personally if you like. Thanks very much in advance! I hope we can get this to happen. Erik Winn -- This is what you want I guess.Made for Debian http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ -- The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. Alan Saporta
Re: Need to clone machines efficiently - help?
On Mon, Dec 25, 2000 at 12:15:50AM -0800, Erik Winn wrote: Hi Folks, I have just started working with a group here in Portland that is taking in old machines and recycling them - putting linux on as the OS (of course ;}). See http://www.freegeek.org for more. Its a non-profit all volunteer thing; and actually one of the people has posted to one of these lists before ... but, apparently things kinda (lamely, IMO) drifted toward a mandrake system -- I think I can turn that around with a little help; I am putting in some good time there and I think that when the realities of maintaining and upgrading rpm systems hits they may change their minds. Cool... we've got an established organisation doing this in Australia now: http://www.computerbank.org.au We're using Debian for all of our systems. Here is the first obstacle - not really a big one, but I spent all day digging around and couldn't really find any tools for this one: we want to be able to clone the machines easily over the local net. Mandrake has a tricky boot floppy that asks only for the eth0 config and then runs a bunch of perl to do the rest of the install non-interactively. I haven't started reading the scripts yet (that's plan B), instead I was hoping that someone had come up with something similar for debian. We are looking at hundreds of boxes already and its really just begun. This was extremely difficult for us at first, simply because the hardware we got was so variable that no standard install was really possible. There was one small shipment of machines with identical disks which we cloned using dd :). Things have got much better lately, since we started receiving corporate donations of largeish groups of modern PCs with similar hardware. The way we've ended up doing it is this: * A debian mirror server * Customised task packages So we start a normal debian install, but then pick task-computerbank-whatever and it's done. A custom task package might play really well with an automated installer, if your hardware is sufficiently uniform to support one. This is really not a huge task - it would just make a nice splash over here if we could come up with something ... I would greatly appreciate recieving help/ideas/advice on this - Note however that I am not actually subscribed to the list at present (sorry, just too much at the moment ) so you can reply to me personally if you like. Thanks very much in advance! I hope we can get this to happen. Good luck with your project. Take a look at Computerbank, and if the goals are close enough, perhaps we should start considering international affiliations (Computerbank has several chapters in different cities, and we've found that this has certainly been to our advantage - international links would be even better). -- | |= -+- |= | | |- | |- |\ Peter Eckersley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pde for techno-leftie inspiration, take a look at http://www.computerbank.org.au/ pgp4lKXf5Bgzz.pgp Description: PGP signature
