On Tue, May 18, 1999 at 08:35:30PM -0400, Brian Almeida wrote: > As for preinstallation, let me make two points: > a) Debian really has a long way to go for someone to do mass installs > of it, unattended.
it certainly could be easier, but it's not that hard. i build many debian boxes...it just takes a lot of experience with debian and a good knowledge of how to use the available tools ('dpkg --get-selections' and 'dpkg --set-selections' are very useful). I usually build them like this because i like to use unstable rather than stable (in my experience the only drawback to this is that there are some days when it is unsafe to build a machine and i have to wait another day or two for fixed packages to appear in my debian mirror) for serious assembly line mass-production of boxes using the stable release of debian, i would build one standard server (or maybe a selection of two or three standard configurations - "web server", "file and print server", and "internet gateway") and use 'dd' or 'tar' to duplicate the drive. finally, follow that up with a perl or sed/sh/ed script to customise the config files. i've done this many times (e.g. to build ppp dialin boxes for schools - except for IP address and hostname and other minor details, the machines are identical to each other), and it works. There is no difference between a debian box built this way and one built using the standard boot floppies. e.g. put new server on bench, plug into network. boot with floppy which NFS mounts a directory containing a .tar.gz file of a complete working debian installation. partition the disks. untar the archive. run lilo. run a perl script to customise things like hostname, mailname, ip address, etc. (alternatively, the same thing could be done with a custom-burnt CD ROM rather than an NFS mounted tar archive) any further customisation can be done by the customer using dpkg and apt-get. prefer postfix over exim? no problem, "apt-get install postfix". don't want samba? no problem, "dpkg -r samba". the important thing is to have debian (at least base and networking) installed and working...from that point on, maintaining the system and installing packages is easy....even from thousands of miles away. > ... > > Also consider this, linux.com is a 100%-debian drive site - from the > impressions I've gotten, the VA people are really big on Debian, but > for the reasons above aren't doing preinstalls of it. Don't be so > quick to judge things. agreed. VA really like debian (and they do a lot to support us). my partner recently tried to get two debian servers from VA Research. The guy she spoke to was quite knowledgeable about debian and understood the reasons why she wanted debian rather than RH (to summarize: quality), but was embarassed to admit that VA dont have the staff to support debian. He said that VA's debian-using customers generally don't need a lot of support...but when they do, it is for something really obscure and difficult which their support staff can't handle. in short, VA would like to provide debian servers but don't have the staff or time to do so...they're working flat-out already. Even so, he went to a lot of trouble to find a VA Research employee who would take a contract job to install debian on the servers (he said many of their techs use debian). he wasn't able to do so in the time-frame that my partner had for installing her servers...so she got someone from Frontier Global (the co-lo facility the servers were going to) to install debian for her....VA supplied the hardware, GF installed debian. (btw, this was all organised remotely from australia, via email and telephone). a few things seem immediately obvious to me from this: 1. maybe there should be "official" discussions between debian and VA Research to figure out what features we could add that would enable VA to start offering debian boxes again...they used to build them in the past. 2. there may be an opportunity for debian developers and experienced debian users to provide contract setup, support, and consulting services for debian boxes through VA Research - it certainly can't hurt to contact them. 3. if you want a co-located debian box, Frontier Global is a good option. their main co-lo facility is not far from VA Research, and they had debian installed and running very quickly after receiving the hardware from VA. craig -- craig sanders