Doing a Linux MASS install.

[William Park]

On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 12:09:53PM -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I stick my nose in a LOT of things, including GTALUG,
> UU and the Toronto Free-Net.
> 
> This past week the Toronto Free-Net got a donation of
> approx. 2,000 computers, about 90% of which are Dell
> Optiplex GX1 machines (Pentium II, 400 MHz) boxes.
> This of course means a challenge, the machines need to
> be made function, get a Linux (or other free OS)
> install and get pushed out the door to people who
> could use these machines :-) . Oh, and the machines
> need to be gone from where they are now by September
> 1, 2006 (no time pressure :-) ).
> 
> So, I gather that Ubuntu has a tool for doing mass
> copy of a tailored distro. onto multiple hard drives,
> has anyone tried the tool? Are these tools available
> in other Linux distros (i.e.: ones that are friendlier
> to KDE than Ubuntu :-) )? How well does this work when
> the hard drives differ in size? Would there be anyone
> interested in doing a MASS (like over 1,000 machines)
> Linux install some weekend in August for the Toronto
> Free-Net?

What's the physical size of those machines?

There are DOS-based ghosting solution, but I'm not comfortable blindly
copying sector for sector.  What I usually do is "tar stream", ie.
    tar -cf - > /dev/tcp/11.22.33.44/5566
    nc -l -p 5566 | tar -xf -

-- 
William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>, Toronto, Canada
ThinFlash: Linux thin-client on USB key (flash) drive
	   http://home.eol.ca/~parkw/thinflash.html
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