Abstract
This tool allows a
system administrator to replicate an installation on many
machines by not having to reconfigure all steps by hand for
each machine.
The principle behind this feature is quite straight forward. Let's imagine you have 10 identical machines for a computer lab on which you want to install GNU/Linux. These are the steps to follow:
If you make the 1st machine's installation using a network packages media (NFS for example) instead of a CD-ROM, you will not need to insert all installation CD-ROMs when replicating the installation.
The interface consists of a list of most of the installation steps. Each step has a two-entry menu associated:
When you have made your choice for each installation step, click on the
button. You will be asked to insert a blank floppy disk (if it is not blank, all data it contains will be erased).After clicking again, the boot floppy disk will be created with the following characteristics:
The installation method (from CD-ROM, via NFS, FTP, etc.) is the same as the one used during the installation of the machine you are currently working on (the 1st machine).
All the steps marked as will be replayed with all choices set to the ones made during the installation of the first machine.
All the steps marked as will have to be manually configured during the installation of the replicas.
For security reasons, the partitioning and formatting steps of the replicas will have to be done manually.
Then, all you have to do is to insert the resulting floppy in the machine you want to replicate the installation on, turn it on, and configure the few remaining steps manually, thus saving a lot of time.