[CentOS] how to install standard software on systems with heterogeneous hardware?

Thu Dec 1 12:05:28 UTC 2011
Deyan Stoykov <dstoykov at uni-ruse.bg>

Thomas Burns wrote:
> I've been thinking about ways to proceed if I need to set up 5
> machines with basically identical software but somewhat variable
> hardware. A simple approach would be to just set up my golden system
> and clone the disk, but the hardware differences would probably cause
> problems.

Not in my experience. I usually do a quick install on the target machine 
with a separate /boot partition and then clone everything from the 
source apart from swap and /boot. This way the target machine will have 
proper initrd with the required modules, such as storage drivers, at the 
first boot. Then boot in single mode, reconfig networking, 
modprobe.conf, fstab, hostname, etc., reboot and that's it. This assumes 
all machines are on the same arch and you don't use LVM or software RAID 
- otherwise it's more complicated then that.

Regards,
Deyan

-- 
Deyan Stoykov, dstoykov at uni-ruse.bg
System administrator
Computing and Information Services Center
University of Ruse