Tools for Doing Mass Deployments of Linux

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

Hi,

The "Cloning a running Linux OS" thread inspired me to ask about doing 
mass deployments of Linux.

I am helping a small school get their systems in order. At the moment, 
it's all Windows and many of the machines in the lab are infested with 
all manner of malware. Initially, we started out with the idea that we 
were just going to do fresh installations of Windows XP only to discover 
that was not feasible since we don't have appropriate licensing to 
install XP Pro on all the machines. That would require us to purchase XP 
Pro licenses, which for a school is not a big deal, if only Microsoft 
would sell them. Apparently, they now have to buy Vista licenses and 
there is some question as to whether a "downgrade" would be allowed or 
not and whether those Vista keys would work for XP Pro. One thing we are 
certain of is that some unknown number of the machines and some of the 
software they are currently running will not be supported by Vista so 
running Vista is not an option. Enter, Linux, though not without some 
resistance, mostly out of fear of the unknown.

I have thought about using LTSP but it seems like such a waste to turn 
Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ and Core2 Duo machines with between 2GB and 4GB of RAM 
into thin clients. There is experimental support for local apps but I'm 
mindful of the fact that Linux doesn't just have to be good in this 
environment. It has to be close to perfect to gain acceptance amongst 
the passive (and active) resisters so I'm wary of things marked 
"experimental".

Ideally, I want the ease of centralized management of LTSP but with fat 
clients that don't have to netboot and can local apps. For instance, 
let's say I want to install EduBuntu on each desktop. In advance, I want 
to select packages, locales and time zone, integrate with a directory, 
and merge all the updates into the installation source. From the server, 
I want to wake up all the client machines on the LAN and do a push 
installation via PXE based on my installation source. Once the 
installation has finished, I want to shut the clients down. The clients 
will not store any user data so it should be feasible to repeat the 
process when we update the "master" installation source by adding, 
removing, or updating software. I realize that we could automate this 
using Puppet or some such tool but the fresh, push installation is 
probably a better route to go for the sake of keeping the desktop 
machines synchronized and uniform.

DRBL <http://drbl.sourceforge.net/> supposedly does all this but it has 
not exactly been the most intuitive thing to configure.

I looked at kickstart for Ubuntu but it seems broken because I don't see 
any package selections. KIWI for openSuse looked mildly interesting 
except I feel like a fish out of water with openSuse, not to mention 
that I got random freezes on one of the newer Core2 Duo machines with 
openSuse 11. (Remember, it has to be close to perfect.) I won't even 
consider Fedora because it changes too quickly. CentOS 5.2 had trouble 
with the Intel Q965 graphics chipset. Besides, K/Ubuntu is perfectly 
fine. Debian's FAI, which is also available for Ubuntu, might be an 
option, though I have no experience with it.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated, well, maybe except for "run 
Gentoo/*BSD/OpenSolaris".
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326
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