Stephen Frazier wrote:
I have seen many suggestions about how to install Debian on s/390. My question is - - - What is the best way?
I'm going to generalise a little more than that; I have installed Debian (Sarge) off a network and I don't recall any particular pain other than the installer itself (then in beta or RC). I know Anaconda installs from networks pretty well, and I believe that SUSE does too, though I've not installed enough to put it to the test. Note, I've only installed for S/390 zSeries under Hercules, and not recently. However, much is the same whatever the hardware.
Shelds up! :)
Bzzzzzzzt Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! No matter how you install any distro, first you gotta boot it. So that bit's much the same for any distro. Then there are partitioning choices and filesystem layout. This (partly) depends on the distro, I note SUSE has /srv which neither RH nor Debian has. At some point you need to choose packages. How you express the choices is dependant on the distro, not so much how you install it. You can probably choose between automatic selection (like Red Hat's kickstart's package list) or manual, and there you can accept some default or choose some expert mode to make individual selections. Likely you'll only do this one once:-) Changing media sucks, so no (real) tapes, CDs or DVDs (unless there's only one). If you're installing several, likely you don't want to share CDs or DVDs so we'll rule those out entirely. That leaves us with network (and I'll include virtual tape and disk here) installs. Now, the _kind_ of network install. File-sharing (eg NFS) can work well as the installer's loader can mount the installer image on a loop device and so use less RAM, presumably at the expense of some network traffic. Anaconda can do a network install from a collection of ISO images. Then there are ftp and http. I don't use ftp, I don't see it as having any advantage over http. I generally use http for network installs; to me it has these advantages: 1. A log showing what files are being used. One can get an idea of what's happening, even on a completely blind install, and there's a record for use later, a record that could be used to create custom media. 2. The server can be far far away. It's possible to install directly from any of your vendor's mirrors (assuming public binaries), and where there are firewall rules in place I speculate the http is more likely allowed than nfs. If the server's far far away, one can use a proxy, either Apache or Squid, to cache the files used for reuse. Network installs scale better than installs from media: copying and changing media sucks. I expect NFS to scale better than http or nfs. I expect virtual media (minidisks) to work best within one real host... Then there's cloning an existing system: I've seen repeated mention of such techniques using VM tools on this list, and for other platforms one can choose between packages such as systemimager and Debian's FAI (Fully Automatic Installer). At some point one needs to customise the installed system. Using Anaconda, one can write one or more post-install scripts in any language installed on the target and execute them from the %post section of the kickstart file. Even your distro has no equivalent feature, it wouldn't be hard to create a package that runs on first boot, configures stuff and disables itself. What is the best way? What is your goal? If you want 1000 systems, the answer's different from the answer if you want one. For a few system here and there, I might create a boot disk (minidisk) which I use to attach to the target and IPL from. If I didn't have easy access to a webserver or NFS, maybe a small system with one on it and the source images that I could run in another virtual machine, or depending on local policy, install from a laptop.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Or just set up Apache as a poxy server, with a view of the Real World and install off that. Properly configured, it will download and cache what you want. Its log will show you what files you needed (and their order), and if you want you can then create your own CD with just what you want.
-- Cheers John -- spambait [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/ do not reply off-list ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
