Re: automated installer

[Robert Citek <rwcitek@alum.calberkeley.org>]

On Wednesday, Jun 16, 2004, at 15:05 US/Central, William Mulvihill 
wrote:
> I'm wondering if there is anything in Linux distros that would work in 
> this situation.  I have a client who wants to have a Linux server 
> serving our product, but they want to know NOTHING about Linux.  They 
> also don't want to continue to pay me to support it.

Sound like they want a web-hosting service.

> So they want some kind of "recovery" disk that would reinstall the 
> server from scratch, including OS and my web application.  There is no 
> user data that would need to be saved.  They just want some kind of 
> disk that they can slap into the drive on boot up and follow a few 
> (very few and dead simple) instructions, press a few (the less the 
> better!) keys, and voila!  Their server is restored.

Really sounds like they want a web-hosting service.

> I'm thinking that the best way is going to be to use some kind of disk 
> imager to just slap it back to some point when everything was 
> installed and working correctly.  But I know that RedHat had their 
> "kickstart" installer that would automatically pick the correct 
> options for your machine.  Although, in doing that, wouldn't you need 
> to ensure that the hardware stayed the same?  Is there anything 
> similar for Debian or other distros?

Kickstart works great.  It's what we use: kickstart + a custom 
configuration script + some manual tweaking in special cases.

Another option is UserModeLinux.  The host is a bare-bones Linux 
install (installable via kickstart) and the guest is just a file (a 
disk image with the OS) which can be backed up on to CD or DVD or 
off-site or whatever.  If the machine dies, reinstall the host with 
kickstart and the the guest with regular file copy.  Just a thought.

But the premiss that they don't want to know anything and they don't 
want to pay you and they want it to work sounds a little, uh, 
far-fetched.  With my dream car, I won't have to know how to drive, I 
won't have to pay for gas or maintenance, and it will take me to and 
from work everyday.

Regards,
- Robert


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