A NOTE: I've never tried this. Just my thoughts, and I might not know enough of what I'm saying, so someone feel free to shoot me down if I'm wrong.
On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Nick Gilliam d-3712 7-5554 ng96753 gillidn wrote: > I am looking for methods to efficiently load many (up to > 200) Debian GNU/Linux machines. The machines are to > be configured identically. TCP/IP connectivity is available. I might be oversimplifying, but if they're truly going to be the same (I'm assuming that IP numbers, etc. will have to be different at least) you can try 1) Install/config ONE correctly. 2) Mount the other hard disks (1 at a time, yuck) in the config'd machine and just cp -A / /mountpoint. Then when you install the disks in the new machines, you can just boot from a floppy, run lilo to set up the mbr and fix the ip numbers/hostnames. There are probably a million better ways to do this. One might involve mounting the drives on the 199 unconfig'd ones via nfs and doing the cp that way, but then you'd have to set up the IP stuff _before_ you can install anything, again probably via the rescue disk. Of course, if you have a few assistants, once you get one up, you then get two, then four, geometrically .... Another option might be to simply configure one designate it as an nfs server, and export its /usr, /home, and other directories to the other machines via nfs. Then you could just copy verbatim the /etc directory to the other 199, again changing the hostname and ip stuff. Makes administration much simpler later --- all changes made on the server (in terms of installed software, etc.) are automagically exported to the others. Will [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/ ***************************************************************************** Good Idea: Feeding Stray Cats in the Park. Bad Idea: Feeding Stray Cats in the park ... to a bear. ***************************************************************************** -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .