[CentOS] A few questions about remastering

Thu Dec 6 14:19:48 UTC 2007
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

Johnny Hughes wrote:
> 
> If you are trying to make a reconfigurable install (and not redistribute
> an OS) what you really need to look at is kickstart installs.  You can
> use kickstart installs to automate installs with no user interaction at all.
> 
> You can kickstart in things from other local repos (and not just the
> centos ones) with the proper setup.

Has anyone written a program that will clone the package set that has 
been installed on an existing machine either by generating a kickstart 
file or 'yum install' commands to reproduce the package list (and the 
configured set of yum repos)?  I'd like to be able do a very minimal 
install on new machines, then after the network and yum are working, 
tell it to become 'like' an existing setup that may have gotten that way 
over some period of time and experimentation without much thought about 
the actual package list.  Personally I'd rather have something like that 
with one or more canned lists than your single-CD server install since 
you usually have to update and replace many packages immediately after 
an install anyway.  Providing a seriously minimal install and a command 
to install the list of packages that you consider the 'server' set would 
give the same result with the install-list-of-packages command (mostly) 
replacing the initial update. That way, all you need is something to 
generate the list-of-packages from an existing machine and you can 
install anything just as easily as the dedicated server.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com