[Nottingham] Easy linux network multicast?

[Postill Robert]

Martin wrote:
> This is for "Ghosting" multiple machines. I'd rather not have to resort
> to my old copies of 'ghost' and multiple DOS disks for whatever nic is
> used! Trying to keep this 'simple'.
OK first of all check out http://freshmeat.net/projects/g4l/ - Ghost for linux, also I believe you can use recent copies of Norton Ghost and an ftp server.  All of which I'd suggest is simpler than trying to use the DOS TCP/IP stack [shudders with memory of barcode terminals running DOS].
 
Second in large DR sites what happens is you have a Ghost LAN (often a single switch) with your Ghost server on that you patch the clients to temporarily while the rebuild completes, thereby saving your normal LAN from the traffic surge.   Also most folk that I know who want to build a large number of machines simultaneously use either CDs of ghost images (because that costs a lot less than a good switch) or you use a distro tool (e.g. Kickstart for Fedora/Red Hat, DrakX for Mandriva, fai for Debian...not sure about that but I think that's it) to script an installation.  For me I'd always use the distro tool becuase the way to go is one distro per site (I'm assuming this is a work thing), and you can make changes to the config that way. Rather than pray for rain using Ghost as some distros helpfully take out the drivers they don't think you need during/after install (Ubuntu does this for IDE and SATA drives), which will be painful over many machines.
 
Robert.