54 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
54 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
[[!meta title="Automated Unix Installations"]]
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From time to time I'm playing around with different Unices,
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mostly free ones like *BSD and Linux and wonder how easy it is
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to have an automatic installation.
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## Preample: There's only one way to do it
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My expererience as a sysadmin is that the only way to scale
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out installations is via network install: USB sticks, cdroms
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or floppies just require too much manual work. As most installations
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need network connectivity anyway, there is no need to rely on these
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old fashioned, non scalable methods.
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## Network install
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If an (unix) operating system supports network install, it should
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require only a TFTP server. The reason for this is that for network
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installations using PXE a TFTP server is required anyway.
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After the installer is running, it can definitely use the usual
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methods to retrieve components like packages (i.e. HTTP, NFS, etc.),
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but this not require me, as a sysadmin, to setup any additional
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service.
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## The challenge
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Now I'm sitting in front of some computers and I'm wondering how
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easy it can be to setup these boxes with different Unices
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*automated*.
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## Current status
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I've started the [[cuni|software/cuni]] project some time ago to
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learn about the unix installers and I'm aware of at least
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Kickstart for Redhat/Fedora, Preseed for Debian/Ubuntu
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and Fai for Debian. I guess there are many other out there and
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I'm wondering how easy it is for every Unix to get into a
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complete unattendet, autoamated installation.
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## Help appreciated, comments and critics welcome
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I'm aware that this is a bigger project, but at the end it would
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be very useful for sysadmins maintaining small and large infrastructures
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to be able to have *one way to rule them all*.
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So if you are an expert of $Unix and know how to automate the
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installation of it via network, [[just drop me a mail|contact]].
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I plan to extend [[cuni|software/cuni]] to be able to create automated
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installation environments, as soon as I've collected the necessary
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information on how to do so.
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[[!tag eth foss unix]]
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