How to install linux on 22 pcs and 2 iMacs

[Mip]

Hey Gang,

I'm teaching technology at a middle school, and want to set up a lab that is based on linux, rather than on M$ products.

I've got 3 flavors of machines:

16 PCs: 64 mb ram, 10 gig hds, Celeron 330ish
6 PCs: 128 mb ram, 20 gig hds, PIII 933
2 iMacs: 32 mb ram, 6 gig hds, 233? G3

Is there a way to install on these machines en masse? I figure I'll have to do at least 2 different installs (one for macs, the other for the PCs), but I'd love to avoid having to set up and configure 24 machines one by one.

THanks,

M

[The Whizzard]

I'm sure there is some sort of utility that can do this over a network, but don't know of one. Unless you find an alternative, do one install on each of the three groups. Then use some sort of HDD cloning utility. Some HDD's come with a floppy that has such utility. You'd take the Master(the one with the installed system) and put it into the other computers to make a bit-for-bit copy. When you have them all cloned, if they're going to be networked, you'll have to change some machine specific configurations, ie, computer name and IP address. I can't think of anything else, except, Have Fun!!

[Mip]

Hmmm... I'll hold out for a network install if possible. However, if that's not an option, do you know of any HDD cloning apps that are free? I've blown my budget for this year, and wouldn't be able to purchase anything until next year (but I'd like to get this all set up sometime during the summer).

M

[bdg1983]

Check the website of the distro you are considering. There are unattended install options in some distros.

[Molecule Man]

I know that mandrake has an option to create an auto-install floppy during the install process so it will replicate your install.

[Mip]

Awesome! That's exactly what I'm looking for. In fact, I was planning to use Mandrake already, as I'm familiar with it. Now, if only version 8.0 comes out of Beta before I need to do this, I'll have the latest kernel to boot.

Thanks all,

M

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by Mip:
Do you know of any HDD cloning apps that are free?

dd

It's been part of every UNIX system everywhere in the world for about 30 years. Sheesh.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

Clones /dev/hda onto /dev/hdb. You can also copy specific partitions. I.E., make a /dev/hdb1 the same size as /dev/hda1, then:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1

This is what I would do:

1. Buy a hot-swap removeable drive bay that works with Linux for about $100.

2. Install Linux on one of the machines, then install the drive bay in that machine.

3. Yank the drive out of one of the other computers, put it in the bay, use dd to clone the drive.

4. Return the drive to its original computer. It'll now be an exact copy of the first machine.

5. Repeat for all the rest.

With that many machines, I guess I won't blame you if you decide to go with some automatic installer like proposed above, but then you're limited with your options. If you do drive cloning, you can install all the software you want, make all the configuration changes you want, etc. etc. etc., THEN clone the machines, rather than being limited to just installation.

[bdg1983]

Since you must have a budget for this project, how about Symantec's Ghost or PowerQuests DriveImage?

We use DriveImage at work for all our Windows rollouts. Believe it is supposed to also work for ext2 partitions.

[UnderScore]

Norton Ghost should work perfectly.
I bought it here: Seriously Check this out. (http://www.directdeals.com/product.asp?id=376)
It comes with antivirus, ghosts, utilities & more. The manuals are on the CD in adobe acrobat PDF format. One of the best deals I have ever come across. Well other than free/open source software.
Imaged the Linux drive to a image file on my Win32 drive.
I was messing with fstab and lilo on purpose.
The PC went sour.
Insert Ghost floppy disk.
Reimage & wait 5-10 mintues.
Eject floppy disk.
Insert my Linux boot floppy.
Boot.
Login as root.
Run /sbin/lilo.
Eject floppy.
Reboot.
System Back to normal.

Hope this helps.

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by UnderScore:
Norton Ghost should work perfectly.

Or you could use dd which has been a standard and essential part of every UNIX operating system on the planet for the past several decades.

[bdg1983]

Yes, I agree that 'dd' could be used.

Ghost would be a little easier to use if the images resided on a central fileserver. It will setup ethernet/network access to the fileserver and save having to hot-swap drives on all the boxes.

Symantec may have a trial version of Ghost you can use.

[ph34r]

Ghost is nicer 'cause you can multicast - we drop the same image onto 100 lab machines in a period of 45 minutes or so. And its a biiig image (4 cd's). You can also split ghost images into cd sized chunks, control how much compression is used, etc.

dd, while nice and free, has no hope of competing with that. Oh, and it's possible to b0rk your drive with dd too.... I have a 1.5gb drive that thinks it has enough cylinders/heads/sectors to be a 6.4gb drive... dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb will do that...