Karanbir Singh wrote: > Robert Moskowitz wrote: >> I am building three identical systems. Well they will have different >> host names, and with time the software setups will drift. But at install >> time they are identical. > ..snip... >> I would hope this is faster than 2 more installs. > > its not > > do the install over the network from a http server, given the same > network, it would be many times faster to do the 2nd and 3rd install > using the ks.cfg generated from the 1st one ( as Terry Polzin already > pointed out ). > > It will be many times faster than doing DD images of entire drives. > eg. in my case here, i can provision a new machine in 2 min and 43 > seconds for a base+core minimal centos-5 install. installing over http > from a machine on a GiB/sec link and installing to a 2 disk raid-1 There is much good to say about using kickstart method than learning a new approach like Clonezilla. I have not used kickstart since Centos 4.something, so I have no good notes and will have to dig again. But this is pretty much a one-time clone and Clonezilla does not seem to set up the partitioning info on the new drive so that would be one more thing to learn. So I take the anaconda-ks.cfg file, add stuff so it will boot off the network and use the update repo as well as the base. Then rediscover the command to run linux from a kickstart file on a diskette. Piece of CAKE! :)