16.3. Creating a Boot Disk For a (Semi-) Automated Installation

This tool allows a system administrator to replicate an installation on many machines while not having to reconfigure all steps by hands for each machine.

After a warning screen about what we are going to do, a list of most of the installation steps is displayed. For each step is associated a two-entry menu choice:

• replay: choose this if you want to reuse the choices you made during the manual installation for the automated installation;

• manual: choose this if you prefer to manually reconfigure this step during the automated installation.

When you have made your choice for each installation step, click the OK 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 OK 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 currently worked on;

• all the steps marked as replay will be replayed with all choices set to the ones made during the installation of the current machine;

• all the steps marked as manual will have to be manually configured during the installation;

• for security reasons, the partitioning and formatting steps will have to be done manually.

Then all you have to do is insert the resulting floppy in the machine you want to replicate the installation on, turn it on, and configure the few remaining steps manually, saving you a lot of time.