[CentOS] centos 5.0/5.1 nfs kickstart

[nate]

Les Mikesell wrote:

> Doesn't this take a considerable amount of setup work on the server side
> per-distro/per-version?  For NFS you only have to download images into
> directories under an nfs export.

It takes a bit of work, mount the iso image, copy contents to a directory,
repeat for the rest. I like the contents of the images exposed, so if I
need to find stuff later it's pretty easy. Initial setup time is about
15 minutes.

The work needed pales in consideration to the work needed to customize
a new distro or version, and test it, which today is a solid week or
two. For a new major version(e.g. I recently deployed CentOS 5 vs
CentOS 4), I had to compile custom RPMS for about 80 packages, two
thirds of which(mostly support files for Ruby on Rails), don't come
in SRPMS.

Then there are about 6 different kickstart configs for each distro/version
depending on the features(which console, software raid(if any),
virtualized(or not).

And prior to CentOS 4.5 for example, there was a significant amount
more work as we had to hack the kickstart image itself, build custom
driver modules and insert them into the installation images. Fortunately
since 4.5, all of the drivers we need have been included in the
stock kernel/install images.

So yeah, takes some time, but for me it's peanuts in comparison to
what else has to be done to make the distribution "perfect".

nate