[Nottingham] NLUG links page

[Dylan Swift]

On 30 March 2011 14:22, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:

> On 30 March 2011 08:49, Mat Booth <mbooth at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > On 30 March 2011 07:05, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:
> >> Folks,
> >>
> >> I've been slowly adding to a general links page on:
> >>
> >> http://nlug.ml1.co.uk/links
> >>
> >> What 'top ten' useful links should be added?... Any 'essentials'?
> [---]
> >
> > As a question about this has came up on this list before, the
> > Kickstart Script manual, for those who are automatically provisioning
> > redhat and related distros is a useful link:
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart
>
> From that:
>
> "Many system administrators would prefer to use an automated
> installation method to install Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux on
> their machines. To answer this need, Red Hat created the kickstart
> installation method. Using kickstart, a system administrator can
> create a single file containing the answers to all the questions that
> would normally be asked during a typical installation.
>
> Kickstart files can be kept on a server system and read by individual
> computers during the installation. ..."
>
> That's a good one for Red Hat and for the sysadmin section.
>
> I'm still on the old-fashioned Clonezilla 'ghosting', pxe-boot, or
> I've even been known to use 'dd | gzip | nc' or 'dd | ssh -c'!
>

We also use Clonezilla for Windows clones - I'm very impressed with the
speed!
I have used dd in the past with the output going via multiple `tee`s to
multiple `nc`s for a mass clone. Still nowhere near as fast as Clonezilla


>
>  For completeness, what do others use?
>

Cobbler (https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/). Integrates ISO upload (to the
server), DHCP/TFT/PXE configuration with kickstart scripting, puppet
integration, remote power control etc. Currently works best with RedHat (it
came out of RedHat) based distros (Fedora, CentOS, scientific linux etc) &
there are efforts underway to integrate Debian based distro's & more (I
understand VMware has been installed this way too).

We then use puppet (not fully integrated yet) to keep in-house systems up to
date with the latest configurations as kickstart/Clonezilla/dd will only
make changes at install time. Puppet will make configuration changes while
the system is running. Use of 'classes' mean that many machines can be
updated with one class on the puppet server.

Cheers

Dylan
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