[Gllug] Reliable Remote installing to a desktop.

[Philip Hands]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:47:46 +0100, James Courtier-Dutton <james.dutton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been given the task to upgrading a remote desktop from gentoo to ubuntu.
> What options are available to do this?
...

Back in the mists of time I did a remote upgrade from Slackware to
Debian ("buzz" I'd guess) over a dial-up PPP link, by unpacking (most
of) the base tarball over the top of the installed binaries, and then
installing Debian packages until there was no old Slackware stuff
showing through, but I'd not recommend that these days, not least
because the base tarball no longer exists.

One approach would be to get debian-installer to offer ssh, and then ssh
in from one of the other machines (or remotely) to get to the console.

  http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/NetworkConsole

(the Ubuntu alternative install CD is just a standard debian-install CD,
really)

If you can talk someone through the first few menus of the expert
install, you can get them to the point where they can select extra udebs
and install network-console.  If it needs to be completely remote then
you need to do the preseed/customised boot medium thing, as described on
the above page.

If you're wedded to the X interface, you could probably get someone to
boot a live Ubuntu CD and use VNC to get at their desktop, and run the
graphical installer from there.

Either way, if you're discarding the Gentoo, it should be a case of
establishing remote access and then doing a standard install.

If you're wanting to preserve stuff from the Gentoo install, then
shrinking the current partition, and installing the new stuff using LVM
would seem to be the way to go, as you'll then be able to cherry-pick
From the old partition, and then later discard it by adding it as a
physical volume to the new system's LVM.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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