Abstract: . . .  DELL_GX260 NET_E1000 VIDEO_RADEON SOUND_INTEL_8X0 VMWARE NET_AMD_PCNET32 VIDEO_VMWARE CDFBASIC / CDF_COMPUTE_SERVER RESTRICTED_SHELL_ACCESS DNSCACHE_SERVER CDF_NTP_SERVER GRUB TechKnowFile 2005/TKF.05 Conference – p.15/30 Page 16 FAI: Fully Automated Installation http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ Mostly Debian specific Booting flexibility (PXE/floppy/CD-ROM) Classes determined by a script at install time Works by means of NFS-rooted environment Hooks at any point during installation Virtually any software . . .
. . .  distribution University-frendly licensing Automated installer Automated networked updates Local mirror TechKnowFile 2005/TKF.05 Conference – p.10/30 Page 11 Alternatives: Linux Distributions RedHat Enterprise Linux SuSE Linux Debian More?.. TechKnowFile 2005/TKF.05 Conference – p.11/30 Page 12 Alternatives: Installers Image-based (disk duplication) installers Norton Ghost / g4u (Ghost for Unix) Simple to understand Can work in broadcast mode Need . . .
. . .  configuration manual in-place Rely on back-ups in case of failure Note: not meant as criticism of the Kickstart installer; our Kickstart configuration was probably suboptimal. TechKnowFile 2005/TKF.05 Conference – p.6/30 Page 7 Objectives Want a Linux management system: Easy to configure and administrate Few ties to a particular distribution Flexible for local customisations Easier to reinstall than fix a broken installation Decouple machine’s function from machine’s hardware One shared installation configuration for all hosts  . . .
. . .  (Computing Disciplines Facility). Serving Computer Science students at the Department of Computer Science. Over 3000 student accounts 10 rooms in two buildings Over 200 Linux workstations 6 Linux compute servers 4 Linux infrastructure servers 40 X terminals 2 Solaris infrastructure servers 5 FTE staff TechKnowFile 2005/TKF.05 Conference – p.3/30 Page 4 Context: Hardware Dell GX260 Dell Precision 340 Dell GX150 Dell GX110 Eurocom L287S No-name clone workstations Dell and OSS servers  . . .
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