[Computerbank] Linux distribution standardisation

[Raul]

Comprehensive reply! :)

> So the approach was to work up a few computerbank specific Debian
> packages and put them on the internal cbv debian mirror, which
> effectively added our customised install packages to the standard
> Debian install package selection list. This list is the list of
> packages for particular functions, and is only around 25 items long.
> From memory (I'm at home now) the packages were called something like
> cbv-barebox, cbv-basicdesktop, cbv-laptop, cbv-officedesktop. These
> packages were set up to call in dependencies which would install all
> the required software simply by selecting one (or two) of the cbv-*
> packages.

Can you post an example of some of these packages? Are they as simple as a
list of packges that you pump back into dselect for upgrade or a wrapper
.deb package that you created?

eg. of deselect list
   [Reference machine]
   dpkg --get-selections > required_packages
   [On target machine]
   cat required_packages | dpkg --set-selections
   apt-get dselect-upgrade

Seeing this is in place in CBV, how easy is this to implement?

> With respect to kickstart etc - I may be on the wrong tram here but my
> impression is that these type of mass installers are intended for
> machines which are pretty much identical in hardware specs - how would
> they go installing two machines, say one with a Pentium 200 and 48MB
> RAM, and one a 486DX/100 with 32 MB RAM, each with different video and
> network cards ?

Maybe someone can post an example of how these are done? Can the /upgrade/
rpm system do anything to help us add/update things between versions of
RedHat?

I raise the second point as I am also concerned about the
upgrade/maintainability aspect. If we develop an installer that uses
someapp-1.2.3-4.rpm or someapp-1.2.34.deb, how much of a hassle will it be
when we move to a new version of the distribution?

We wont need to upgrade often, but it will have to happen someday, and we
have to keep in mind that we will need to repeat what we have done now.

> Partitioning Hard disks - cbv have usually used the KISS approach for
> single disk installs - one partition mounted on / and one partition for
> swap.  If there are two disks, the larger one is usually mounted on
> /usr and the other is mounted as / - the swap location would generally
> be determined on a case by case basis.  Occasionally the split might be
> / and swap on the larger disk, with /home on the smaller, especially if
> there is a significant difference between them.

I definitely vote for one / partition + swap on the first drive. If there is
two HD's in a machine, take the second one out for parts!

In rare cases we probably could break off /home, though the extra protection
it gives us is small in comparison to automatic backups, second drives,
server storage etc.

Raul <- Another KISS supporter! :)