[Gllug] Restoring and installing machines

[Philip Hands]

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John Hearns wrote:
> Tushars talk also made me think of:
> 
> Mondo Rescue
> http://www.mondorescue.org/

Mondo Rescue is great, but can be a little fragile, because it relies on
features in the kernel that you don't need to run the machine normally, so
it's possible to upgrade your kernel, make a new mondo image, and produce
something with all your data on it, but no ability to boot.

It's fine if you're using stock kernels on most distributions, but if you
roll your own, you need to test the result reasonably regularly, but as
Tushar said, TEST TEST TEST :-)

[...]
> For the install, there is of course SuSE Autoyast and Redhat Kickstart.
> For Deboan types there is FAI http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/

You can also do this with debian-installer itself, and preseeding:

  http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apbs02.html#preseed-auto

(that's the manual for the upcoming "etch" release, so is currently the
testing distribution of Debian -- it is possible to use the testing
installer to install stable (sarge) systems, and if you're interested in
automated installs, that's probably the way to go because the latest
installer has much improved over the preseeding in sarge)

For examples of how to use this stuff, see:

  http://hands.com/d-i/

(Hmm, I ought to update that to reflect that my "Auto mode" section
is now in the etch manual -- that'll give me something to do today,
so check back if you read it immediately, because it's liable to change)
</blatant_self_promotion>

FAI is actually rather better where you're in a position to have total
control of the local network (especially DHCP & DNS setups) whereas with a
bit of work you can make the debian-installer approach survive the most
hostile environments (i.e. MS DHCP, no DNS, dodgy routing, and clueless
admins who are unwilling to fix any of that lot -- i.e. my customers ;-)

Cheers, Phil.
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