CentOS - Jul 2006 - Using Centos on both server and client systems a private network

I'm looking for how-tos/hints to make the following possible:

I downloaded all four centos 4.3 iso to a ext3 partition on my hd, 
burned the first disk only, and the a hd based install.

Problem: Centos didnt seem to take into account that I was doing a HD 
based install and and ask me if I wanted to use the hd images as a 
source for additional appliction installs later.  Now it asks me for 
the cds and I dont want that.  I want it to look at the hd for the 
additional rpms.

Question: How can I make this happen?

Catch:  The catch is that this "server" will eventually be setup to 
"feed" the cds out to clients when they install and when they
"add apps
later". So I'd like to use an implementation method that lends itself 
to both applications.

I'm open to nfs, ftp, or http content delivery to clients in case one 
or the other makes a difference.

rance at frontiernet.net wrote:
> I'm looking for how-tos/hints to make the following possible:
> 
> I downloaded all four centos 4.3 iso to a ext3 partition on my hd,
> burned the first disk only, and the a hd based install.
> 
> Problem: Centos didnt seem to take into account that I was doing a HD
> based install and and ask me if I wanted to use the hd images as a
> source for additional appliction installs later.  Now it asks me for the
> cds and I dont want that.  I want it to look at the hd for the
> additional rpms.
boot with the 'askmethod' option, or use the boot.iso to boot the
machine, not cd-1.
> Catch:  The catch is that this "server" will eventually be setup
to
> "feed" the cds out to clients when they install and when they
"add apps
> later". So I'd like to use an implementation method that lends
itself to
> both applications.
> 
> I'm open to nfs, ftp, or http content delivery to clients in case one
or
> the other makes a difference.
> 
http is my favorite option. once the machine is installed, setup a
repository locally on the machine and share it out via httpd, let the
remote machines either pxeboot or use the boot.iso to start the
installer and install over the net.

-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219 at icq

rance at frontiernet.net spake the following on 7/3/2006
9:26 AM:
> I'm looking for how-tos/hints to make the following possible:
> 
> I downloaded all four centos 4.3 iso to a ext3 partition on my hd,
> burned the first disk only, and the a hd based install.
> 
> Problem: Centos didnt seem to take into account that I was doing a HD
> based install and and ask me if I wanted to use the hd images as a
> source for additional appliction installs later.  Now it asks me for the
> cds and I dont want that.  I want it to look at the hd for the
> additional rpms.
> 
> Question: How can I make this happen?
> 
> Catch:  The catch is that this "server" will eventually be setup
to
> "feed" the cds out to clients when they install and when they
"add apps
> later". So I'd like to use an implementation method that lends
itself to
> both applications.
> 
> I'm open to nfs, ftp, or http content delivery to clients in case one
or
> the other makes a difference.
Any of those will work, but you need to make some choices.
If only going to install on internal update, nfs works well and has the
advantage of using the iso files put in a directory, properly shared.
If you are going to do remote systems, I would use an HTTP install. FTP will
work, but it just seemed like a pain to get working properly.
For your boot cd, you could just use the boot.iso image in the /images/
directory on the first cd. This defaults to the "linux ask method"
option you
have to boot the first cd with to get it to use all the methods available.


-- 

MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!

On Monday 03 July 2006 09:26, rance at frontiernet.net
wrote:
> I'm open to nfs, ftp, or http content delivery to clients in case one 
> or the other makes a difference.
If I wanted to set up and then support a large number of workstations, my 
answer would perhaps be "hackish" but would work. YMMV. 

1) Set up a yum repo webserver on the local network. This makes workstation 
installations go much faster, and allows me to control the rollout of 
updates. 

2) Set up a single workstation with all the packages that you want. 
	-> Set up yum on the workstation to use the yum repo. 
	-> Use rpm -qa and make a stupid-simple "yum install `rpm -qa`"
script out of
it. 
	-> Put the yum files (/etc/yum*) and the yum install script on the yum repo 
webserver as a .tgz file. 

3) Install new workstations with minimal installs of CentOS (only the first CD 
is needed if you choose "custom" and then uncheck all packages) which
takes
just a couple minutes per system. 

4) wget the setup script that you built in #2, and run. Since it's all
local,
it will install very fast. 

With this method, I could probably set up 5-10 workstations per hour if they 
were pre-built and had a fast network. This method has an additional 
advantage of leaving the systems preconfigured to get updates that I could 
control the rollout of. 

I would additionally recommend setting up a cron script on each workstation to 
do updates automatically ("yum update") every night at 3 AM. Grep for 
"kernel" in the output to toggle an automatic reboot, if it makes
sense.

I similar methods to set up Porn-filtering web-proxy servers. (that we sell to 
schools) Thus, I can roll out security updates automatically for the entire 
organization in < 24 hours while performing only a few minutes of work. 

Again, there may be "better" ways to achieve the above, but the shell 
scripting to support the above would take me about 4 hours to cook up, and 
would work quite well. 

-Ben 
-- 
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- XEROX PARC slogan, circa 1978

On Mon, 2006-07-03 at 16:26 +0000, rance at frontiernet.net
wrote:
> I'm looking for how-tos/hints to make the following possible:
> 
> I downloaded all four centos 4.3 iso to a ext3 partition on my hd, 
> burned the first disk only, and the a hd based install.
> 
> Problem: Centos didnt seem to take into account that I was doing a HD 
> based install and and ask me if I wanted to use the hd images as a 
> source for additional appliction installs later.  Now it asks me for 
> the cds and I dont want that.  I want it to look at the hd for the 
> additional rpms.
> 
> Question: How can I make this happen?
> Catch:  The catch is that this "server" will eventually be setup
to
> "feed" the cds out to clients when they install and when they
"add apps
> later". So I'd like to use an implementation method that lends
itself
> to both applications.
> 
> I'm open to nfs, ftp, or http content delivery to clients in case one 
> or the other makes a difference.
If the directory where you downloaded the isos is NFS-exported
you can do an nfs install without any extra work.  I usually do
subsequent updates and package installs with yum over the internet,
but run everything through through a caching web proxy configured
to cache large files so only one download really happens without any
distribution-specific setup.  Of course distributions like fedora
that have yum get different urls from the mirrorlist every run
pretty much screw this up...

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com