On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 20:19, Rick Johnson wrote:
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> Colin Coles wrote:
> | Have you read the 'Burning a Red Hat CD HOWTO'?
> | It's a bit long winded, but if you do a lot of installs it'll probably help.
> |
> |
>
>http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/RedHat-CD-HOWTO.html
>
> I prefer to do network installs via Kickstart, and therefore do not desire
> to create my own ISO's. After rebuilding my packages for i686 (and having
> duplicate i386 and i686 packages in my install tree), I'd easily consume 5-6
> CD's just for RPM's. Not practical (not to mention a CD swapping nightmare).
>
> Therefore I skip most of the steps in the howto, simply replace original
> packages w/ errata where applicable and run genhdlist.
>
> No need to recreate the installer or update comps unless I'm adding/removing
> packages to groups, changing the order, etc.
>
I have done a fair amount of this installation tree building myself.
I have several configurations that have been thoroughly tested with
certian hardware and needed to keep old installation trees until we
retire a configuration. I have them for 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3.
What I finally started doing is the following:
In an install directory I have dirs named 6.2, 7.1 etc
When I need to start testing a new distro, I create the dir for it Iwil
be creating a 8.0 soon probably.
1 copy installation off the 1st cd into a dir called
install/version#/allfiles
2 copy all RPMS off the others into the RPMS dir
3 create a dir called install/version#/upgraded
4 copy everything but the RPMS directory to upgraded (this allows
dinking with anaconda and image files without loosing the origs
5 hardlink all the rpm files (anaconda does not like symlinks)
6 create dir called install/version#/updates
7 modify my mirror.defaults file to mirror the updates.redhat.com tree
into updates
8 hardlink all rpmfiles from updates into the upgraded tree
9 run a perl script I wrote called cleanRPMSdir that deletes any
duplicate packages in an RPMS dir. It used to copy to another oldrpms
dir until I started leaving the original tree unchanged. THis is the
thing that used to wear me out so the script reads the rpmfiles and if
it is for the same packa and the same arch. it deletes the old one based
on the %{BUILDTIME} value of the rpm.
10 run gendhlist on the upgraded dir
11 point the kickstart files at the upgraded dir as well as any
upgrades/freshens that get done on the lan.
This allows me to have all the old rpms incase a downgrade needs to
happen and saves a bootload of diskspace with the hardinks. We have
done probably 150 installs using this system and I can blow a config
onto a machine in 15 minutes for replacement or testing.
I can't say that cleanRPMSdir is ready for public consumption but I will
put it on the website at :
http://www.elevating.com/bret/cleanRPMSdir
I anyone has any questions/comments I am always willing to discuss.
HTH
Bret
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