Quoting gracie ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > (crosspost)
De-crossposted for this reply. > We are setting up a new project and this involves installation of > Linux (we are still deciding between debian, redhat and mandrake) and > I would like to ask for your opinions on what distro is more suitable > for this kind of setup with one of the major consideration will be the > ease of task for installing Linux in 100 PCs. Is there such a way to > minimize the task of installing linux like a centralized installation > on a network? Only part of the problem is installation per se. If matters were that simple, then you could just do one installation, dd the filesystem image to a file (if you can keep it below 2 GB), then use a boot floppy to copy that image to new machines' hard drives across the LAN. (There are probably messy details I'm forgetting, but I'm driving towards a larger point.) But the problem with such approaches is that you don't _literally_ want to exactly duplicate a machine image. At a minimum, you want each newly created machine to have an individual hostname and IP address. You might want to be able to adjust for variations in hardware including hard disk sizes. Red Hat provides the Kickstart mechanism, which works well enough. Somewhat better is my friend Brian Finley's SystemImager, which will work with just about any Linux distribution. http://systemimager.org/ For Debian only, one can alternatively use FAI (Fully Automated Installation), http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ > Is it much better if i install linux via local cdrom or just place > the installation source files on the networked server? The latter's a whole lot faster and more efficient. > Also, I need some opinions of on the design structure for the file > system on our linux server with proper partitions if we intend the > server to be used as a news server receiving 1GB of newsgroup messages > each day over the internet with 100 users who will log each day to run > scientific applications and internet resources. How will this kind of > setup help me in restoring my backups when sudden things go wrong in > the future? TIA Hoo boy. First, I hope you intend to devote an entire machine to the netnews server. It should have a quite big disk array, and please budget for replacement of the hard drives more frequently than you would otherwise expect. Give it lots of RAM, too. You'll probably be running the INN daemon, which eats a gig of RAM for breakfast, and keeps getting hungry and yelling for more. Better make /var/spool/news its own (very big) filesystem. Maybe ReiserFS. On the larger matter of partitioning strategy: Ask n sysadmins, and you'll get at least n+1 answers. -- Cheers, Rick Moen "SYN! .. SYN|ACK! .. ACK!" -- the mating call of the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
