As always, pardon if this has been asked before. I don't remember seeing it
on the list.

Is it now possible or are there any plans in the future to allow for a
scripted, hands-off, install?

The mythtv discussion got me thinking about this.  I don't want a mythTV
that runs off of a CD but I don't want to have to figure it all out by
myself either.  If you could script the install and put it on a floppy, then
with a standard gentoo release cd and a floppy disk, you can have it do an
automatic install.

The cd would detect the floppy in the drive and if it contained a valid
gentoo script, would automatically launch it. The script would need to
define the partitions that need to be setup, root password (and any other
accounts that need to be setup) network setup,  compile flags and/or
make.conf options and finally, what packages need to be installed. There
would need to be hooks at certain points to call user-defined scripts that
are either on the floppy or ftp'd in from another server.

As with any automated process you take the good with the bad.  The good is
start it up, on Friday, comeback on Monday and deploy the machine. The bad
is security. bringing scripts form other servers always poses a security
risk. Since , in this case, I'm thinking of a local ftp server on my private
network, I'm not too worried about it but it is an issue that needs to be
addressed.

This would also be great for companies that build standard
workstations/servers or if people wanted to release scripts to build other
special purpose machines.

Samples could be:
* Webserver with LAMP installed
* ISP server setup for virtual domains. (It's taken me months to get my
apache/php/exim/courier/mysql/spamassassin setup the way I want it. If I
could write  script then I could build/rebuild it at any time or share my
setup with others.)
* mythtv
* Dell laptops (we're a special breed, with special needs)
* Firewall
* Name your favorite pet project here.

Any interest in this besides just me? Is this already out there and I've
missed it?

humbly,
=C=

* Cal Evans
* http://www.christianperformer.com
* Stay plugged into your audience
* The measure of a programmer is not the number of lines of code he writes
but the number of lines he does not have to write.
*


--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list

Reply via email to