Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt not only installs a specific list of apps apps that i want on each system, but configures them automatically perhaps via scripts, and enables or disables services etc. Basically, i want to drop the CD or DVD in a box which will probably not have a monitor anyway, and walk away. I then come back or ssh in and everything is already installed, any repos are added, configured and ready to go. Is this a core build? I'd appreciate any pointers on this. Thanks. Dave.
Greetings,
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 8:23 PM, David Mehler dave.mehler@gmail.com wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt not only installs a specific list of apps apps that i want on each system, but configures them automatically perhaps via scripts, and enables or disables services etc. Basically, i want to drop the CD or DVD in a box which will probably not have a monitor anyway, and walk away. I then come back or ssh in and everything is already installed, any repos are added, configured and ready to go. Is this a core build? I'd appreciate any pointers on this. Thanks. Dave.
cobbler??
spacewalk??
Regards,
Rajagopal
Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
Greetings,
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 8:23 PM, David Mehler dave.mehler@gmail.com wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt not only installs a specific list of apps apps that i want on each system, but configures them automatically perhaps via scripts, and enables or disables services etc. Basically, i want to drop the CD or DVD in a box which will probably not have a monitor anyway, and walk away. I then come back or ssh in and everything is already installed, any repos are added, configured and ready to go. Is this a core build? I'd appreciate any pointers on this. Thanks. Dave.
cobbler??
spacewalk??
Regards,
Rajagopal
Hi
First kickstart, then cfengine or puppet.
Regards
mg.
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 7:53 AM, David Mehler dave.mehler@gmail.com wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt
Did I miss the announcement? I wasn't expecting 5.4 to be out for another few weeks....
mhr
MHR wrote:
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 7:53 AM, David Mehler dave.mehler@gmail.com wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt
Did I miss the announcement? I wasn't expecting 5.4 to be out for another few weeks....
http://twitter.com/CentOS/status/4831596086
On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Florin Andrei wrote:
Did I miss the announcement? I wasn't expecting 5.4 to be out for another few weeks....
It's a sure-hit proposition. I schedule a major downtime to install new kernels in all manner of infrastructure servers -- mail, web, nfs, vpn, blah, blah -- and then, the VERY NEXT DAY, I see the CentOS X.Next announcement telling me that I was about two weeks too soon.
At least there are some things I can count on... :-)
On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 10:53 -0400, David Mehler wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt not only installs a specific list of apps apps that i want on each system, but configures them automatically perhaps via scripts, and enables or disables services etc. Basically, i want to drop the CD or DVD in a box which will probably not have a monitor anyway, and walk away. I then come back or ssh in and everything is already installed, any repos are added, configured and ready to go. Is this a core build? I'd appreciate any pointers on this. Thanks. Dave.
Hi Dave,
Investigate kickstart installs, you can customize packages and run scripts after the install is complete before the box restarts.
Tait
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.
On 10/12/09, Tait Clarridge tait@clarridge.ca wrote:
On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 10:53 -0400, David Mehler wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt not only installs a specific list of apps apps that i want on each system, but configures them automatically perhaps via scripts, and enables or disables services etc. Basically, i want to drop the CD or DVD in a box which will probably not have a monitor anyway, and walk away. I then come back or ssh in and everything is already installed, any repos are added, configured and ready to go. Is this a core build? I'd appreciate any pointers on this. Thanks. Dave.
Hi Dave,
Investigate kickstart installs, you can customize packages and run scripts after the install is complete before the box restarts.
Tait
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
I was doing spacewalk the first part of this year. I don't remember it needing tftp. On the other hand, it's a *massive* investment of time to install, configure, and get working correctly.
Furthermore, it was late April, right before my contract there ran out, that they went up to release 0.5. I would *NEVER* recommend using a release under 1.0 for anything important. Actually, I personally wouldn't touch it for anything important until it hit 1.0.1, and the bugs they missed are fixed.... <snip> mark
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.
Hi, Thanks for your reply. I'd probably be doing them in pairs spread out over a long period. I'd be interested in your php kickstart setup script. Thanks. Dave.
On 10/13/09, Tait Clarridge tait@clarridge.ca wrote:
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.
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 00:21 -0400, David Mehler wrote:
Hi, Thanks for your reply. I'd probably be doing them in pairs spread out over a long period. I'd be interested in your php kickstart setup script. Thanks. Dave.
You may want to look at cobbler. It has a PXE boot option that can be limited by MAC address. This would help in installing a certain "profile" to your machine making it easier for you to customize each install without having to burn mountains of CDs...
I am playing around with cobbler right now, but I can still send you the kickstart script if you would like.
Hi, Yes, thank you. Please send that script privately. I'll check in to cobbler. Thanks. Dave.
On 10/13/09, Tait Clarridge tait@clarridge.ca wrote:
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 00:21 -0400, David Mehler wrote:
Hi, Thanks for your reply. I'd probably be doing them in pairs spread out over a long period. I'd be interested in your php kickstart setup script. Thanks. Dave.
You may want to look at cobbler. It has a PXE boot option that can be limited by MAC address. This would help in installing a certain "profile" to your machine making it easier for you to customize each install without having to burn mountains of CDs...
I am playing around with cobbler right now, but I can still send you the kickstart script if you would like.
Am Dienstag, den 13.10.2009, 02:06 +0200 schrieb David Mehler:
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.
This can all be done with kickstart but you will have to have a quite big uniqe kickstart config for each machine. And then all that CD-waste... I'd really rethink the network-install options.
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David Mehler wrote:
Hello, This might be called a core build not completely positive. What i want to do is make a completely customized centos 5.4 unattended CD or DVt not only installs a specific list of apps apps that i want on each system, but configures them automatically perhaps via scripts, and enables or disables services etc. Basically, i want to drop the CD or DVD in a box which will probably not have a monitor anyway, and walk away. I then come back or ssh in and everything is already installed, any repos are added, configured and ready to go. Is this a core build? I'd appreciate any pointers on this. Thanks. Dave.
My Strategy for those things is:
1. cobbler ( https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/ ) for a minimal Unattended Installation. cobblers primary goal is installation over Network but it can also generate CD/DVD. cobbler integrates kickstart files into your CD.
2. puppet ( http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet/ ) for central configuration management.
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Christoph Maser -
David Mehler -
Florin Andrei -
Marcelo M. Garcia -
mark -
Markus Falb -
MHR -
Paul Heinlein -
Rajagopal Swaminathan -
Tait Clarridge