Re: Replicating Linux?

["Robert G. Brown" <rbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Does anyone know of a way to install Linux on many machines?
Has to be a way to do about 95% of the work, I don't KNOW (I'll bet someone
here does!).  I'll bet that if you build a boot diskette with a script instead
of a standard install you're going to get most everything about right, assuming
all the machines are IDENTICAL.

The exceptions are naturally the most interesting part of all this, the only 
biggie that comes to mind is /etc/hosts and related files: Unique machine
names, ehternet address, etc. possible to automate, but a bit harder than a 
straight script. This is a sed/awk/perl problem at best.

I see that Scott has supplied us with some gory details on this, which look
right or damn close to it. I'm advising that you can automate the sort of 
procedure Scott has written about.

>I had an e-mail from someone at SUN who had come up with a way...
Certainly a part of the script I was talking about. Set up a collection of 
partitions on the network that looks like what you want all the machines to
have and the script does some setup and copies all that stuff to the local
host.
 
>... Does SUN use Linux??
SUN Microsystems does not officially use Linux, but many employees have Linux 
systems, either on their home machines, or as a partition set up at work. SUN
is also a supporter of Linux efforts in many ways, whether its unbundling a
good deal of software under GPL for FSF/Linux/FreeBSD owners, or actually 
donating hardware, bandwidth, and software to the cause. SUN finances Linux
events through sponsorship and by funding employee attendence at these events,
as well as other activities that are worthy of comment but mostly make
this message longer and even more boring than I want it to be [;-)].

>Also that nasty ALR box I had seems to be behaving better.....
Ah, was this the "dying in it's sleep" problem? Did any of our sage words
here help you?

>It looks like I have to do the family thing this Sunday...
Have fun!  It's a good idea to have a good backlog of technical presentations,
and at the moment we have at least (more or less) ready to go.... Tomorrow
will be an interesting meeting, and we'll see what demand is like for these 
presentations in the future.  The meeting will go on, because we don't know
who will appear, and we've got technical material prepared and ready....


                                                             Regards,
                                                             ---> RGB <---