On Tuesday 30 January 2001 05:57, Nathan Bockrath wrote: > I have this lovely task of configuring a large number of identical laptops, > and I am hoping that someone knows a way to do the install without running > through the gazillion dialog boxes on each one. Basically, the only > difference on each laptop is the IP address and the Hostname, all the other > configuration info should be the same. I just do not want to do this > install one by one... > > Has anybody done this? If so, please enlighten me... The problem with network installs is that laptops have slow network connections. If you get a recent model high-end laptop and a new/good CardBus Ethernet card then you can get 8MB/s at the cost of most of your CPU time. For that number I suggest using adapters to put the laptop drives in a desktop machine. However I suggest the following proceedure: Install the first machine with all required software. # this fills all unused space with zeros - easily compressed cat /dev/zero > /foo ; rm /foo Then do gzip -9 < /dev/hdb > file.gz Then for each hard drive do zcat file.gz > /dev/hdb Where /dev/hdb is the laptop drive mounted in a desktop. Gzipping usually helps because most machines have slow IO and fast CPUs. To make the OS notice the new partitioning do: echo w | fdisk /dev/hdb (should work, I haven't tried it - may need to use expect). Then use sed to change the IP addresses, names, etc. It should be easy to write a script to mount the new file system, run sed on the files, and umount it. Good luck! -- http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
