Hello again, 1.) I now installed SystemImager in a test environment (debian server + kubuntu client) and so far it looks very promising. However at least in my test environment SI does always create a client from scratch (recreate all partitions and files), instead of transferring only the differences. How can I change it, so that SI checks if the partitions it would create are the same that are already there and then sync only the files that have changed. Is there a built-in way to do that? I'm using PXE to start the update process.
2.) It would be nice, if I could "mark" a client for reinstallation so that it will get a new image the next time it boots. However once the client has a new image, I want to automatically restart the client and "unmark" it on the server, so that it will not receive the update again after the restart. Is there already a way to signal the server when the client has finished its update or do I have to implement that myself (somehow) in the autoinstallscript. I can implement the (un)marking stuff by myself, I just need a way to run a script on the server when the client is finished. 3.) Thank you (and Paul) for your help so far. It really helped me to understand how all the different parts of SI are working together. Btw: The partitioning works now fine with different hard disks. I had some problems at first because SI apparently always wants to resize the last partition on the disk (if you are using the default config), which was the swap partition in my case. But after moving the data partition to the end (I hate parted now) it runs perfectly with the standard settings that si_prepareclient generates. Thomas Krause P.S.: Does anyone have experience in running SystemImager on Gentoo and maybe even has an ebuild that I could use to install SI on our real server? -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Andrea Righi Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. Juli 2007 10:45 An: [email protected] Betreff: Re: [sisuite-users] Using SystemImager in a school environment Thomas Krause wrote: > 1. Do you think that SI is suitable for this kind of scenario? Yes. > > 2. If I understand correctly SI is file-based, meaning that unlike > typical imaging programs (ghost, etc.) it copies files (or better: file > deltas) to the server and not whole partitions. If that is the case, > then how does SI work on a fresh client with an empty hard drive? Do you > store additional partition infos? And if yes, how do you handle > differing hard disk sizes (e.g. client hard disk is smaller or larger > than original hard disk)? SI can be used to perform the first installation of fresh clients, re-installations to restore the operating system in a well known state and to keep in sync any number of clients with an image of a filesystem (with optional deltas). The partitioning schema of your clients is defined in /etc/systemimager/autoinstallscript.conf of your golden client. In your image server it'll be /var/lib/systemimager/<your_image>/etc/systemimager/autoinstallscript.conf (there's an autoinstallscript.conf for each image). In this (xml) configuration file you can define the size of your partitions. If you've disks with different sizes you can use the attribute unit_of_measurement="%" (it can be set to "MB" or "%"). See `man autoinstallscript.conf` for details. > > 3. On feature of SI is that clients can run the SI client directly > over PXE, which I find easier than running from one PC to another with a > CD. IIRC you have to enable this for specific clients first. What > happens with clients which are not enabled? Will they boot normally from > their hard disk (that would allow me to simply enable PXE permanently > for all clients in the bios). Also how will this conflict with the > existing PXE server for diskless clients? Ideally I would be able to > differentiate between diskless PXE clients, and the image update PXE > clients by MAC-Address. It can be done easily with si_mkclientnetboot (see man si_mkclientnetboot for details). With this command you can define the clients that you want to image over PXE with SI. The other clients will use a different PXE config file and they'll boot with your diskless configuration, or directly to the local disk, etc, etc... > > 4. How well does SI work with different hardware. I guess this is > mainly determined by the os itself (Kubuntu 7.04 in this case), but > there seems to be some things SI can help me with (SystemConfigurator?). > One of the things I want to do is to run my golden master client on a > Virtual Machine (VirtualBox), so that I can make changes at home without > having to use a separate computer. Do you think this is possible, or are > the differences between real and virtual hardware to big? Hardware heterogeneity is very well supported (at least in our testing environments :-)). I usually perform my tests using VMWare machines so I don't see any problem if you run your golden client or your image server (or both) in a virtual environment. Regards, -Andrea ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ sisuite-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ sisuite-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
