Ulrich Dangel wrote: > Are you sure grml is the right distribution? It is not meant to be used > as a normal desktop system. If you want to run normal Linux Desktops > just use a normal Distribution like Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL or Opensuse.
Yes I have chosen grml especially for this job. The 20 machines are all virtual and they will make up a server farm with a mix of http, smtp, postgresql, load balancers, and supporting services. To squeeze the most out of the physical hardware I need a small distro that can expand into large software (such as postgresql servers) without any fuss. grml fits the bill perfectly. Some of the small vms that do simple jobs in the network use as little as 64MB ram and 20MB hard drive. Because grml boots from an ISO that is mounted readonly I can share a single copy of the operating system between all the vms. That saves on resources, but more importantly it saves on thinking: every machine always has the same set of tools. Because grml mounts a hard drive as a persistent writable layer I can give each vm its own private drive to store configuration and data. This makes it very easy to clone machines, make backups, and restore when something goes wrong. Grml already contains most of the tools I want in my farm such as haproxy, dnsmasq, and lighttpd. The missing tools are only an "apt-get" away. I have wasted enough of my life running "configure; make; make install" and a lightweight distro that avoids compiling add-on software is a real blessing. I could not find another distribution that had all these features. I am extremely impressed with grml and what it can achieve. ( Actually what really grabbed my attention the first time I started grml was the Terminus font. When I saw Terminus appear as the default I knew the people behind this distro must be serious about making computers work in useful ways. ) Thanks jonty _______________________________________________ Grml mailing list - Grml@mur.at http://lists.mur.at/mailman/listinfo/grml join #grml on irc.freenode.org grml-devel-blog: http://grml.supersized.org/