"mirror" like actions ??

[Chubb]

Hi,

I have installed a Debian sarge onto a dektop pc i also installed all of the packages that i need.
Is it possible to copy that install over network to other systems ?

Here is the situation.

several pcs in network have to be installed and i do not want to do it all manually.
they have no cd-rom but are able to boot from network.
I want them to boot from the network (or from floppy) and install the linux system ( +packages ) onto their hard drives.
I want to do this because i have verry limited bandwidth and i do not have the time to do it all manually.

if anyone could help it would be great.

greetz
Chubb

[iwanabeguru]

hi

it's possible if the other computers have the same hardware or leastwise
same architecture.

check "debootstrap" , or make an nfs server on your installed computer , boot from other computers , connect to your nfs server and copy all of your system to the client computer.
Use dd or rsync instead cp

theese my tips

[Chubb]

thanks for the reply,

The main problem is that i don't know linux. I have tryed reprepro and then apt-proxy and FAI . And where i am sure that these packages could be the solution i cannot seem to get them to work.

I have searched manuals al over the internet and they all say do apt-get and edit config, well i just like to know what exactly to put in that config.

the pc's that i have to install have blank hd's so i cannot just add a line in their sources.list.

i need somehow to make a mirror from my install (reprepro ?) and then be able to let others boot to that pc and retrieve everything that is needed to install the same system on their own hd via my LAN (and not accessing the internet).

So it seems that i have to get my desktop to act as
1) a repository
2) debian mirror
3) dhcp server

if i could make those 3 packages work it would all be done, but there lies the problem ( reprepro apt-proxy and FAI ).

greets

[farslayer]

If you just want the same packages on all three that is easy to accomplish..

Go to the first machine that has everything you want..

dpkg --get-selections > selections.txt

That will create a text file with all the installed packages listed.
Install Debain on the other machines and copy the selections file to them

dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Apt should then dutifully go out and download and install the additional packages to the new machine. once complete the package set will match the original.

FAI would have been my other suggestion, but you already tried that.

Other options would be

ghost for Linux http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l - Provided the hardware is the same
Partimage http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page - Again provided the hardware is the same.. there is a bootable CD image available with this on it.