I've done most of my installs over NFS. I find that during FTP and HTTP
installs, the installer will first retrieve each package to the local
system before extracting it. I don't find this to be the case in
network-mounted installations. I've done http and ftp, and they're more
cooperative in terms of open friendly network ports and simplicity of
setup, but I find they're both slower. If you're going to install a
dozen boxes with software development RPMS, you're going to have all
those extra, large packages moved across the network individually and
all that portmap and file locking and whatnot. It's not "bad", but I do
tend to find NFS is fastest.
--
John Beamon
Systems Administrator
Franklin American Mortgage
eml: jbeamon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
web: www.franklinamerican.com
Wolak, Piotr wrote:
Hello,
I use kickstart install for installing Red Hat 9 clients. I have run
into some issues with the FTP install method speed. I have attached the
ks.cfg.
Here is the scenario:
I have one FTP server running Red Hat 9 (I tried vsftpd and proftpd). I
created two installation floppies and 1 installation CD (custom iso
image with ks.cfg file included). Everything have been working fine
since last week. Full Red Hat 9 install (~3.5 GB) took 15 minutes to
install. Now (I am looking at the installation screen) takes 1:48:33 h.
Of course it varies. Sometime it is 1 h some other time 4 h.
I have checked the FTP server because I thought that it may be causing
some issues. But the FTP sever is fine. I can run a ncftp session as a
anonymous user and download all Red Hat/RPMS folder with 6 MB/sec speed.
I've checked different machines (means different net drivers HP and IBM)
and do know what could be the problem.
The client during the installation is almost all the time 99% idle. The
time between one package download and the next one is very long (30
seconds).
Here is my question:
How can I debug what is happening?
I would appreciate any help from you,
Thanks and my best regards,
Piotr Wolak
ks.cfg:
#Kickstart file for Full Linux RedHat 9 installation
#System language
lang en_US
#Language modules to install
langsupport --default=en_US
#System keyboard
keyboard us
#System mouse
mouse --emulthree genericps/2
#Sytem timezone
timezone America/New_York
#Root password
rootpw --iscrypted $1924872978429834028efkshjfwhjf
#Reboot after installation
#Use text mode install
text
#Install Red Hat Linux instead of upgrade
install
#Use Web installation
url --url ftp://linuxinst/linux/9/en/i386
#System bootloader configuration
bootloader --location=mbr
#Clear the Master Boot Record
zerombr yes
#Partition clearing information
clearpart --all --initlabel
#Disk partitioning information
part / --fstype ext3 --size 1 --grow --asprimary
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size 100
part swap --size 2048
#System authorization infomation
auth --useshadow --enablemd5 --enablenis --nisdomain cae.bosenet
--enablecache
#Network information
network --bootproto=dhcp --device=eth0
#Firewall configuration
firewall --disabled
#Do not configure XWindows
skipx
#Package install information
%packages --resolvedeps
@X Window System
@GNOME Desktop Environment
@KDE Desktop Environment
@Editors
@Engineering and Scientific
@Graphical Internet
@Text-based Internet
@Office/Productivity
@Sound and Video
@Graphics
@Games and Entertainment
@Authoring and Publishing
@Server Configuration Tools
@Web Server
@Mail Server
@Windows File Server
@DNS Name Server
@FTP Server
@SQL Database Server
@News Server
@Network Servers
@Development Tools
@Kernel Development
@X Software Development
@GNOME Software Development
@KDE Software Development
@Administration Tools
@System Tools
@Printing Support
net-snmp
%post
###################################
## Turn on these services
###################################
chkconfig --level 345 on ntpd
chkconfig --level 2345 snmpd on
###################################
## Turn off these services
###################################
chkconfig --level 12345 atd off
chkconfig --level 12345 canna off
chkconfig --level 12345 FreeWnn off
chkconfig --level 12345 isdn off
chkconfig --level 12345 pcmcia off
chkconfig --level 12345 rhnsd off
chkconfig --level 12345 sendmail off
chkconfig --level 12345 off
chkconfig --level 12345 rhnsd off
chkconfig --level 12345 rhnsd off
chkconfig --level 12345 rhnsd off
