Auto install and Slack 8

[matheusber]

is there any way to make use of any kind of auto install with Slack 8 ? i must install about 30 pcs at College, and i just heard about RedHat's QuickStart ( somethins like this ,,, )

i thought about make a iso after get the first one installed and then use a mini distro to copy this from the lan and use dd to "install" in the others pcs ... does anyone knows if this works ? all about the same hardware ...

matheus

 

[n0cmonkey]

Its been a while since I looked at a slack install, but what I think you could do is create your own distribution packages. customize the first machine how you want it to be and package the configurations and whatnot. Then, do an ftp or nfs install using those new packages instead of the default ones. If all of the machines have the same hardware this should work just fine. The only things you would have to change afterwards would be: hostname, ip address (if not using dhcp), and I think thats it 😛

Not the simplest solution, but you could easily learn a lot and get this done quicker than manually configuring everything.

 

[matheusber]

ok ...

what is "package the configurations and whatnot " .. ?

after installed, how can i separate things ?

better ... where to read about this ? 🙂

great ideia yeah ... learn about slack ... 😉

i have on installed already ...

what i'll do is to make the packages ( i have not and clue how to ... ) and then when installing say to install all the packages ... that i've already set to have just the ones i'd like to install ...

is this ???

matheus

 

[LNXman]

Originally posted by: matheusber
ok ...

what is "package the configurations and whatnot " .. ?

after installed, how can i separate things ?

better ... where to read about this ? 🙂

great ideia yeah ... learn about slack ... 😉

i have on installed already ...

what i'll do is to make the packages ( i have not and clue how to ... ) and then when installing say to install all the packages ... that i've already set to have just the ones i'd like to install ...

is this ???

matheus

I am not sure If I understand what you are trying to do, but since you say you have one machine with Slackware 8 already installed with what you want/need, then you can look under /var/log/packages, and checkout the names of the packages you installed in that machine. Each file name is the actual package name you have installed, therefore, the list of all those files will be the names of all the packages you would like to install in all your other machines (as long as the other machines are the same, or close enough).

If you would like to be slick, you can install all packages manually by means of a script you write included in a custom floppy boot disk you create, containing all the relevant Slackware package tools (installpkg, removepkg, explodepkg). To access the packages you need after booting from the floppy, you can:
1. Use NFS (<-what I would do, and I think it would be easier)
2. Use FTP (<-you would have to code this within your script)
3. Use CDROM (<-but I dont think you want to do this for 30 machines)

In any case, you can get more info on Slackware packages by manning:
pkgtool
installpkg
removepkg
explodepkg

Info in creating a boot disk can be found here.

GL

P.S. if you create your own boot disk, make sure you include lilo as well . . . 🙂

 

[cleverhandle]

Jeez, people... forget packages, just make a tarball. This is easiest if you have one extra hard drive (or at least an extra partition of substantial size) beyond what's needed for the machines. Install and configure the first machine however you want. Remove that "master" drive for the moment. Put in the spare and install a "minimal" system - just enough to mount partitions and make a tarball, so don't bother configuring it at all. Put the master back in alongside the minimal system. Mount the master at, say, /mnt/linux. Then, cd to mnt and "tar cpf linux.tar linux" - that's going to tar up the whole master installation and put the archive in the /mnt directory of the minimal drive. If the master installation is installed on multiple partitions, then you'll need to do that for each partition - check out the tar man page for options to include/exclude directories. Beside the time spent configuring the master system, that all should take an hour, tops.

Now, remove the master drive and put a "child" drive in it's place. Make the partitions and file systems on it as necessary, then mount it at /mnt/linux. cd to mount, and "tar xf linux.tar". Rinse and repeat as necessary. The only thing you should have to do on the child drives is to change the hostnames and IP info, which you can do immediately after imaging the drive. The imaging and configuration should take less than 10 minutes per machine.

Note: this is not necessarily the fastest or most clever way to accomplish this, but I think it's the most conceptually straightforward. There are lots of things you could do with bootable CD's and such that would clean this up. Also, Norton's Ghost is supposed to support ext2, if you don't mind paying for it. So that may be an option if you have a Windows machine around.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Wow, I think I almost fell asleep reading that. Thats a lot of work to do 30 times. Making packages (the same packages the slackware guys make when they put out their distro but customized for your site) would be the easiest, in my opinion. You do hard work once. Then the rest is simply booting from a floppy and giving the install an ip address of your ftp/nfs server.

 

[matheusber]

n0cmonkey .... how can i edit the slack install process ... ?

thanks to all .. but i think editing the install gives me more power to make anything if i had to change things in the future ...

n0cmonkey ... you're saying me to open every packet and edit the things for my system ... ? and afterwards use these ones to install ?

the best for me is a kind of script that the install would read the packets from and then make it without me ...

just use a bootdisk and say goodbye

matheus

 

[cleverhandle]

Heh... I was kinda reading that 30 as 10 for some reason. Little bit different story then. Still, let's just improve the process a bit. Same basic idea, just serve out the tarball over NFS. Boot the child machines with a live filesystem cd, mount the share, and untar that way. Much cleaner, though it requires a bit of configuration on the child machines before it's ready to roll. I still wouldn't bother with custom packages unless you see yourself doing this a lot more in your future. Slack packages aren't all that hard to build (easier than rpm's for sure), but it just seems like you could set up the machines with tarballs in the time it takes just to read and digest the info on packaging. If you do go the packaging route, there's some info at linuxpackages.net.

I'm really not trying to diss custom packaging or anything, but I can say from experience that it seems a lot less attractive when you actually get down to doing it. Best of luck whichever way you go...

 

[Buddha Bart]

sounds like you need a "tagfile". When you hit the package selection stage of a slack install it will give you the option to select a tag file. Inside that file you make a real simple list of which packages to install and which to skip. I haven't had to make one in forever, but do a google search for "slackware tagfile" and i'm sure you'll get everything you need.

bart

 

[matheusber]

Originally posted by: Buddha Bart
sounds like you need a "tagfile". When you hit the package selection stage of a slack install it will give you the option to select a tag file. Inside that file you make a real simple list of which packages to install and which to skip. I haven't had to make one in forever, but do a google search for "slackware tagfile" and i'm sure you'll get everything you need.

bart

hey ... great this tagfile man ...

i read about it at http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/distros/slack/sl_tagfiles.html

well ... now does anyone knows if there is any way to edit the slack install, and all i have to do is boot the two discs ... and afterwards everything goes by itself ... ?

matheus