Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo Linux preinstalled

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 12:53 +0200, Stefan Schweizer wrote:
> Well, catalyst is not really good for that because I need something
> that I can constantly upgrade without recompiling everything .. that
> is a live system for me at the moment.

Because there isn't any way to cache packages in catalyst to keep from
having to recompile everything...

> And LiveCD installers is nice, but what I need is a Sysprep-Installer
> like when someone turns on his windows PC the first time, where you
> can setuo hostname/user/password and maybe network.

Simple enough.  This could be done with a small shell script.

> Is anything like that available for Linux?

Sure.  Write one.  It isn't like you're asking for anything complex.  It
needs to ask the user what?  User name, password, and time zone?

Heck, you could take a note from catalyst/release media and have the
system auto-login as root using bashlogin via inittab at first boot.
Then have the system run a shell script as root.  The shell script could
adjust the files (inittab and root's .bashrc) back to their original
state, along with asking the user for their "adminstrator" password, a
username for their normal user, that user's password, and the time zone.

Most of what sysprep does is completely irrelevant for a Linux
installation, as it clears out the hardware configurations in the
registry and prepares the system for detecting the hardware on boot.  It
also allows for the setting of passwords and such.  Even with sysprep,
you end up writing your own scripts for any customized software.

(Used to be a Windows admin... scary, huh?)

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux