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

Tue Nov 29 19:08:43 UTC 2011
Scot P. Floess <sfloess at nc.rr.com>

You could setup Cobbler and koan install the other machines from the 
Cobbler server.

Cobbler uses a nice templating engine (Cheetah) and I've managed to use 
that within the kickstart file Cobbler serves up to specify packages to 
install for a given machine.  So for example on Machine A, I can have the 
foo package installed and on Machine B install the bar package...

Cobbler even supports PXE booting clients to get installs started...

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011, 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.
>
> One approach that appeals to me is to install minimal centos on the
> first system, add a few rpms after installation, do my desired config
> file tweaks, then somehow generate an rpm that depends on all the
> post-install rpms and contains my custom versions of the config files
> I tweaked. Then, to set up the other 4 systems, I'd use the kickstart
> file from the first, then yum localinstall my custom rpm, which would
> install all the dependencies and tweak all the config files. I assume
> the centos install would deal with the hardware differences. Does this
> idea make sense? What happens when two different rpms want to provide
> the same config file?
>
> Are there any other simple alternatives I have overlooked? What is the
> best practice when setting up identical software on multiple systems
> with heterogeneous hardware?
>
> mahalo,
> Dave
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Scot P. Floess             RHCT  (Certificate Number 605010084735240)
Chief Architect FlossWare  http://sourceforge.net/projects/flossware
                            http://flossware.sourceforge.net
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