Big disks are so cheap these days, I don't see why you'd want to go diskless. Administration can be just as easy using other techniques.
Any of the distributions will give you most of what your users are going to need, right? With something like kickstart it's easy to install many identical clients.
You can rdist any third-party software that's needed, nightly perhaps.
Setup a trusted/secure machine that you can use as an entry point into all of you clients. Also setup a server to contain the distibution of your choice, and third-party RPMs. Then if you ever need to install somthing later on down the road, you can just ssh into each client, and install the RPM you need. This is very easily scriptable. Hopefully you have a nice NFS server, and autofs running on the clients.
This way everything is local to the client, and you eliminate a lot of network traffic. With 2500 linux clients, network bandwidth will become an issue.
Yes, I've used kickstart since 5.2, and have been able to get it to work in all cases.
Python errors are usually the result of using the wrong boot disk. If you doing a network install you need to use the bootnet image, otherwise use the basic boot image.
If you're getting any other Python errors, there's probably something wrong in your kicstart config file. Otherwise, maybe you have actually stumbled upon a bug.
I've only used Kickstart+DHCP+NFS installs. So I just put in the stock bootnet floppy, boot with "linux ks", the istaller goes off the the DHCP server to get the network config, brings up the NIC, mounts up the directory with all of our kickstart config files via NFS, reads the particular config file for that client, mounts up the distribution via NFS, and the install begins.
There was a bug in 6.1 where the "next-server" option obtained from the DHCP server didn't work. This forced you to put the kickstart config files on the same server as the DHCP server. A minor annoyance, but it's been fixed in 6.2 now.
As far as installing third-party software, there's nothing that says you can't do that with post-install scripts. We do, and it works great. Our post install scripts even install all of the updates.
There's nothing wrong with compiling from source either. That's what/usr/local/ is for. You're not going to get everything you want from the distribution anyway. (e.g. ssh)
Well, granted RH6.1 did have some pretty annoying bugs, the kickstart did work. RedHat rewrote big chunks of the installer in Python starting with 6.0, and they didn't get everything implemented correctly. It did work mostly though.
I've been using kickstart+DHCP+NFS since RH5.2 and, despite its annoyances, it sure beats the hell out of the Slackware "jumpstart" we hacked togeather here.
RH6.2 fixed a lot of little bugs, so I'd give it a try again.
As far as a validator goes, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the RedHat installer does provide *A LOT* of debugging output on virtual consoles 2, 3, 4, and 5. Also, once this install gets on its way, a shell is opened up on VC2. That's all I've ever needed.
And the post installation hooks are very powerful. I won't go into that here, but if you'd like to see what we've done here at the Computer Science Department at the University of Minnesota, send me an e-mail.
After reading many of these comments, it got me thinking about wireless technologies. It seems to me that using a Linux box with wireless transceivers indoors is fine, or maybe two neighbors setting up a little wireless network, but when it comes to large-scale outdoor deployment, it seems to me that it'd cost more to develop a Linux solution than it would a custom-tailored embedded solution. Anyway, wouldn't it be cool to be able to purchase DSL service from your local ISP, but instead of running the phone line into a house, run it to a little gizmo on top of the pole? This little gizmo would have a DSL router-wireless lan bridge inside, and would be a tiny little thing not worth stealing. If it was damaged by lightning, it would be cheap enough to replace. Possibly it could be powered off of the same telephone line it uses for the DSL...I don't know...I'm not an engineer, so I'm not sure if that's possible. Anyway, it's not to hard to find a pole with a step-down transformer on it, and I'm beting if you contacted the power company (you're going to have to deal with them anyway in order to get the gizmo on top of the pole) they'd be able to get a pole-mounted meter hooked up to the 120V powerlines...just like the meter on the side of your house. And your little gizmo would have a little transformer to step down to whatever voltage/amprage it needs. As far a power consumption charges, i've seen power meters equipt with little transmitters so that the person who checks your meter can get a reading without actually having to read it off the meter. (So these poor people won't have to climb the pole on a Minnesota Winter day with a windchill of -50F, for e.g.) Or, some might even have the little fax circuit to sends a fax to the billing office each month over the same phone line that that DSL service is provided on (my water meter has this.) Hey, even better: wouldn't it be nice if local ISPs got togeather and setup a metro-area wireless LAN. Then all you'd have to buy is the little wireless LAN PC Card for your laptop, and let the ISP deal with what goes on top the pole. Just some ideas...
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Big disks are so cheap these days, I don't see why you'd want to go diskless. Administration can be just as easy using other techniques.
Any of the distributions will give you most of what your users are going to need, right? With something like kickstart it's easy to install many identical clients.
You can rdist any third-party software that's needed, nightly perhaps.
Setup a trusted/secure machine that you can use as an entry point into all of you clients. Also setup a server to contain the distibution of your choice, and third-party RPMs. Then if you ever need to install somthing later on down the road, you can just ssh into each client, and install the RPM you need. This is very easily scriptable. Hopefully you have a nice NFS server, and autofs running on the clients.
This way everything is local to the client, and you eliminate a lot of network traffic. With 2500 linux clients, network bandwidth will become an issue.
Yes, I've used kickstart since 5.2, and have been able to get it to work in all cases.
/usr/local/ is for. You're not going to get everything you want from the distribution anyway. (e.g. ssh)
Python errors are usually the result of using the wrong boot disk. If you doing a network install you need to use the bootnet image, otherwise use the basic boot image.
If you're getting any other Python errors, there's probably something wrong in your kicstart config file. Otherwise, maybe you have actually stumbled upon a bug.
I've only used Kickstart+DHCP+NFS installs. So I just put in the stock bootnet floppy, boot with "linux ks", the istaller goes off the the DHCP server to get the network config, brings up the NIC, mounts up the directory with all of our kickstart config files via NFS, reads the particular config file for that client, mounts up the distribution via NFS, and the install begins.
There was a bug in 6.1 where the "next-server" option obtained from the DHCP server didn't work. This forced you to put the kickstart config files on the same server as the DHCP server. A minor annoyance, but it's been fixed in 6.2 now.
As far as installing third-party software, there's nothing that says you can't do that with post-install scripts. We do, and it works great.
Our post install scripts even install all of the updates.
There's nothing wrong with compiling from source either. That's what
Well, granted RH6.1 did have some pretty annoying bugs, the kickstart did work. RedHat rewrote big chunks of the installer in Python starting with 6.0, and they didn't get everything implemented correctly. It did work mostly though.
I've been using kickstart+DHCP+NFS since RH5.2 and, despite its annoyances, it sure beats the hell out of the Slackware "jumpstart" we hacked togeather here.
RH6.2 fixed a lot of little bugs, so I'd give it a try again.
As far as a validator goes, I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the RedHat installer does provide *A LOT* of debugging output on virtual consoles 2, 3, 4, and 5. Also, once this install gets on its way, a shell is opened up on VC2. That's all I've ever needed.
And the post installation hooks are very powerful. I won't go into that here, but if you'd like to see what we've done here at the Computer Science Department at the University of Minnesota, send me an e-mail.
After reading many of these comments, it got me thinking about wireless technologies. It seems to me that using a Linux box with wireless transceivers indoors is fine, or maybe two neighbors setting up a little wireless network, but when it comes to large-scale outdoor deployment, it seems to me that it'd cost more to develop a Linux solution than it would a custom-tailored embedded solution. Anyway, wouldn't it be cool to be able to purchase DSL service from your local ISP, but instead of running the phone line into a house, run it to a little gizmo on top of the pole? This little gizmo would have a DSL router-wireless lan bridge inside, and would be a tiny little thing not worth stealing. If it was damaged by lightning, it would be cheap enough to replace. Possibly it could be powered off of the same telephone line it uses for the DSL...I don't know...I'm not an engineer, so I'm not sure if that's possible. Anyway, it's not to hard to find a pole with a step-down transformer on it, and I'm beting if you contacted the power company (you're going to have to deal with them anyway in order to get the gizmo on top of the pole) they'd be able to get a pole-mounted meter hooked up to the 120V powerlines...just like the meter on the side of your house. And your little gizmo would have a little transformer to step down to whatever voltage/amprage it needs. As far a power consumption charges, i've seen power meters equipt with little transmitters so that the person who checks your meter can get a reading without actually having to read it off the meter. (So these poor people won't have to climb the pole on a Minnesota Winter day with a windchill of -50F, for e.g.) Or, some might even have the little fax circuit to sends a fax to the billing office each month over the same phone line that that DSL service is provided on (my water meter has this.) Hey, even better: wouldn't it be nice if local ISPs got togeather and setup a metro-area wireless LAN. Then all you'd have to buy is the little wireless LAN PC Card for your laptop, and let the ISP deal with what goes on top the pole. Just some ideas...