Tom: Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into those tools. Mark: Yes, they are using pxeboot. Right now when they boot up, the pxe config offers two options, 32- and 64bit. Are you suggesting I create multiple entries that one selects based on what the machine is going to be? Is there a way to have this done automatically so I don't have to physically have to do that for each machine, but rather turn the thing on and have it determine what needs to get installed on that particular machine? Les: I was hoping for some way to have it all automated so if for some reason I'm not in the building, I can instruct someone else to reboot, pick the kickstart option in the pxeboot menu (be it a web, mail, db, or user server) and a few minutes later have a working machine without them needing to do anything else afterwards. Mirroring the data files from backup is a single step that can be done by any monkey, it's the configuration, or the manual selecting of a script to run, something they can easily screw up, that's I want to avoid. On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Tom Grace > <lists-in@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 20/01/2015 16:29, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote: > >> > >> So my question is, is there some way do determine via kickstart, what to > >> install on that machine based on some criteria, possibly the IP that's > >> being assigned to it, or MAC address, or something ... > > > > If you just want to use kickstart, it would be pretty simple to serve > these > > via HTTP, and have a simple script in PHP or similar that takes the > > requesting IP and uses it to choose which version of the kickstart to > serve. > > > > I would suggest that the "right way" would be to kickstart all your > machines > > the same way, and then use a configuration management tool (like Puppet > or > > Chef) to customize them. This approach is likely to be more work, but > also > > more maintainable in the long run. > > Or, if you just want the packages that a custom kickstart would > install, use a basic kickstart to bring it up, then run your own > script (from an nfs mount, scp'd over, pasted into a command line or > whatever you might find easier than learning puppet). The script just > needs to determine the rest of the packages needed for this particular > server and 'yum install ....' them. > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos