[CentOS] customized centos 5.4 install, core install?

Tue Oct 13 04:15:52 UTC 2009
Tait Clarridge <tait at clarridge.ca>

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.
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