On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 20:06 -0400, David Mehler wrote:
Hi, Thanks for all your replies. I checked out spacewalk and cobbler, both of which look like they require a network support infrastructure, at least a tftp server. I want to use a CD or DVD. Kickstart sounds like the way to go, but i'm looking to have everything self contained, for example if i want to install the postfix package, i'll want to remove sendmail, set up postfix to start at selected runlevels and configure the main.cf and master.cf files so that when the box reboots postfix is ready to go. I'd also like to have this install as slimmed down as possible, for example i probably won't be using x so i'd prefer not to have any x packages in the install dvd. Thanks. Dave.
I believe recently there was a thread posted about respinning a DVD for these purposes, you could also have a network install CD pointing to a local repository on your network and a kickstart on an internal webserver.
Kickstart is very robust, I am pretty sure you can get it to do anything you want (especially after the install is complete).
I currently have a kickstart script that installs packages for a PHP/mysql setup (as well as the base files) and then updates everything before rebooting. It also disables a few services that I do not require.
I suggest hitting google for more kickstart tips/tricks.. as there are a lot of things you can do. The issue would be that for each of the new systems that you want to bring up unattended, you would possibly need to burn a new CD or change the kickstart config file on your web server. This would be because I am pretty sure that you do not want to have multiple machines using the exact same configuration information.
Would you be doing multiple machines at once? Or one at a time, spread out over long periods.