On Thu Sep 19 2002 at 11:02, Christopher Malek wrote: > We do this here with a fair number of systems (~170) -- it's scalable > given some infrastructure. > > We use a standard DHCP kickstart floppy image, which causes the machine > to get its ks.cfg from the file server pointed to by the "next-server" > DHCP variable (and the "filename" variable), as John mentions. Then we > have a separate ks.cfg for every host which uses "network --bootproto > static -ip <ip>", to make sure that all the machines use a static address > after the reboot. We've written a ks.cfg file generator which handles > creating the ks.cfg for each host. > > All the sysadmin has to do is run the ks.cfg generator for the host, add > a record for the host to the DHCP server, and kickstart with the > DHCP kickstart floppy. Just to mention... loading the boot image itself from a network server using PXE (with "cleaver" ks.cfg files) also works really well to do this sort of per-host customisation. And like dhcpd boot images, it is *fast* :) However, PXE also gives you the option to use a menu to choose between a number of different boot options. Kickstart can then become one of only several possible options, loading a diskless terminal-server client, a win/dos boot image, a rescue disk image, or whatever. Especially in an environment with a large number of hosts that need to be used for different purposes depending on the user's choice (such as a multi-purpose university computer lab or whatever), pxe can be invaluable. > Chris Just my 5c worth :) Cheers Tony
