Re: [gentoo-server] network install

[Andrew Fant]

--On Thursday, October 28, 2004 23:22:50 +0200 Ramon van Alteren 
<ramon@××××××××××.nl> wrote:

> Andrew,
>
> Andrew Fant wrote:
>> It may be overkill for you, but I've had good luck using systemimager to
>> push gentoo installs around.
>
> I AM definitly interested :-)
> I'm currently working on two large projects, one involving a software
> development lab with a reasonable amount of servers.
>
> The other is a centre for Open Source Software in Eastern Africa, linked
> to a university with a lot of linux desktop clients.
>
> Both need something like systemimager.
> Ik had a quick browse through their website and found it very
> interesting. Mind sharing some of your experiences ?
>
> It's not in portage, did you install from source or rpm ?
> The manual mentions that the tool configures itself at buildtime and
> downloads additional modules. Do you know if it's possible to download
> beforehand ? (Internet connections in eastern africa are not exactly
> superbe)


I just grabbed the source tarball and built it from there.  Most of the 
perl modules required are already in portage (Systemconfigurator comes to 
mind).  SI does depend on cramfs support, which is masked, but works well 
enough.  I haven't used any of the systemconfigurator functionality, 
though, so I can't vouch for that.  SI also uses rsync heavily, so if you 
are running a portage rsync mirror on the box you want to use as your image 
server, you may need to hack at it a little.  Also, SI doesn't handle 
unmounted filesystems well, so the stock Gentoo advice about never mounting 
/boot doesn't apply.  The install process is controlled by shell scripts, 
so tweaking them to meet specific requirements isn't too much of a hassle. 



Hope this helps.

	Andy