Thanks Dianne, I also came to this idea, but it is quite a hassle to disassemble harddisks from about a 100 workstations and then reassemble them.
I got some feedback from Jack Coates, on how to create a network boot CD. This is a lot easier to roll-out. Here's my complete setup: I have 1 image-server, containing images of the different computer types (hardware + software config) Each workstation has a dual boot config, defaulting to W2K - needed for some course specific applications. The second boot option is linux, password protected from lilo. I also have an extra partition which stores a local copy of the image of the W2K partition. A normal boot from harddisk defaults to W2K, except when an administrator chooses to boot linux (provided the password), to perform some maintenance tasks (updating images, ..) All workstations are equiped with a bootrom. De boot sequence of a workstations is network, harddisk. CDROM and floppy boot are disabled in the password protected BIOS-setup. The image server is also a dhcp+bootp-server, in which workstations - identified by networkcard MAC-address - can be selectively enabled to boot from network. When network booted, an automatic restore is performed: the network booted linux system finishes init by a script that first checks if the local image is identical to the image stored on the server (using MD5-SUMS), if the local image needs to be updated, the local image is rsynced with the server image, and the up to date local image is copied to the W2K partition. The script finishes up by disabling the network boot entry in the bootp-server en shutting down the workstation. The next time the workstations starts, it's in sync with the image on the imageserver. I'm currently tweaking this setup for performance and do some fine-tuning; also have to deal with domain members that share images; ... But currently, the system is stable and is a great help in maintaining a lot of workstations. Regards, Lieven On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 17:08, Dianne Marie Montesa wrote: > hi lieven > > if the workstations have same configurations like > make/model, hard disk, memory, etc ... you can install > linux on one system only, then 'dd' the hard disk to > the other disks. well you will have to collect the > hard disks from all the workstations though. > > just adding to your ideas > dianne > > --- Lieven Van Acker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > is there a way to create an iso9660 equivalent of > > the network.img > > bootable install disk? > > > > We have quite a number of workstations to install in > > our school, but a > > lot of floppydrives suffer from wear. > > > > This is how I want to rollout: > > > > 0. Create a bootable CD from network install floppy > > image > > > > 1. Install from network from a bootable CD > > containing the network > > install image. > > > > 2. Generate an autoinstall floppy > > > > 3. Generate a second iso image containing > > auto-install info > > > > 4. Use the second CD to automate installation on > > other workstations. > > > > The only question remaining is how to convert a > > bootable floppy image to > > a bootable cd image. > > > > Any ideas? > > > > Thanks, > > > > Lieven > > > > > > > > > > > Want to buy your Pack or Services from > MandrakeSoft? > > > > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site > http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ > > ---- > > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
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