Doing a Linux MASS install.

[Colin McGregor]

--- William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 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?

They are low profile desktop boxes, the official
specs. say the following:

Low-profile chassis:  
Weight 10.89 kg (24 lb) 
Height 10.9 cm (4.3 inches) 
Width 40.89 cm (16.1 inches) 
Depth 43.69 cm (17.2 inches) 


> 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 -

We can NOT count on the drives all being the same
size, Dell would have installed what ever hard drive
they could get for the lowest price that day. Further
during the time those machines were in government
service no doubt some of the drives were replaced.
Other issues, some of the machines have a sound card
in the expansion bus, some of the machines have sound
on the motherboard... So we are looking at a lot of
very similar, but not identical machines...

Colin McGregor
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