Hall, Ken (GTS) wrote:
The small addition of the read time for DDR is nothing compared to the time required to install the packages over the network. That's at least the same amount of reading, plus network time.
The packages are compressed, so that's not accurate.
I agree about the problem of keeping multiple masters. We keep just one per version, and use a first-boot process to install additional packages via yum as needed, or let the admins install what they need manually. It's still faster, by quite a lot. Unfortunately, I don't have time today to run measurements, but our base system clone process takes less than 30 minutes from beginning to end.
I used to KS a desktop configuration of RHL 7.3 to a 233 Mhz Pentium II over a 100 Mbit HDX network in under 15 minutes.
All this said, we have been seriously considering going to a kickstart based method, but my experience with it has not been encouraging. Aside from taking longer, it seems to be fairly fragile and requires more manual effort. Our clone method consists of running a VM-based dialog, waiting for the copies to finish (run asynchronously in a service machine), and then autologging the new guest.
KS is good where you want a series of systems the same. Sorting out %post scripts can take an amount of mucking around, just like writing any program. In those cases where user/admins will make further changes, the %post processing might be left to first-boot time. -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaa...@coco.merseine.nu z1aaaa...@coco.merseine.nu -- Advice http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 You cannot reply off-list:-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
