[gentoo-server] Basic Boot deployment

[Wade Mealing]

For those who read this, and think that it doesnt make alot of sense,
this was hard to write.. so bear with me.

The Gold server intends to be able to deploy many platforms, although
our focus will be simplified Gentoo Server deployment.  Gentoo lends
itself to this form of deployment, but I believe that deployment and
integration of existing legacy systems is an important part of the gold
server.

The method of deploying these "images" should be as similar as possible
across operating systems and platforms.  

Any deriviation from the default installation methods should converge
back to the main installation tree method as soon as possible.

The planned method is listed below.

Network Boot 			( PXEboot on intel )
Kernel
NFS mount root file system 	( From Gold Server)
init
installation 
 -> (Via KICKSTART or GLIS or OTHER) 
 -> disk/package configuration via any of the above
    pulling from goldserver.
Machine specific configuration via CVSup
bootloader (Grub, Lilo, MILO )
reboot

At the moment, I have the first 5 steps working on an intel system, and
need to get the installation part working, (Trying to hackup kickstart,
any python coders on this list ?) to move away from RPM and more towards
emerge.

An alternative method as mentioned on IRC this week, is using GLIS,
although this isnt able to "boot" and configure from a configuration
file .. yet. 

Just bringing people up to speed on what ive been working on, and it
seems a like things are a bit slow right now, but you can be assured
that things are moving.

This same method can be used to implement a windows install by
downloading a windows image (previously uploaded) and writing it to the
local disk.

I know i've covered alot of ground, in this document and would like to
know your thoughts on it.

Please keep to technical discussion.

Wade Mealing