[H-GEN] Ghost for Linux or *nix for that matter

[Sarah Hollings]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

Jay wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> Good evening,
> 
> I am going to have to load several new machines with Linux, StarOffice etc. :)
> 
> The idea of course is to set up one machine as required and "ghost" it over to 
> the other machines and keep that image for emergency reloads.

Recently I had to set up 12 machines with Linux in a lab situation for a 
5-day course.  Knoppix is a desktop distro of linux that is well suited 
to this - the bandwidth from your CD-ROM drive is probably going to be 
better than your network  ;-)

"Ghosting" can work well if you're going to be constantly reimaging the 
machines, which are guaranteed to be identical in every way, and you 
have a good server to store and manage the images.  Otherwise it gets 
difficult, and you need Rembo or something a lot better than ghost.

But for a dozen or so initial installs I'd go with a 5-6 burnt copies of 
Knoppix 3.2 which comes with a nice install of Open Office.

The only extra config I had to do was setup /etc/network/interfaces 
which for some reason didn't get the "iface eth0 inet dhcp" line from 
the install script.  Read the stuff about lang= options on the 'net 
first as being stuck in a German keyboard can be confusing  ;-}

    http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html

Rgds
-- 
Sarah Hollings                     IT Manager
sarah at humanfactors.uq.edu.au       The ARC Key Centre
Ph +61 7 33656080                  for Human Factors and
Mb +61 416 045401                  Applied Cognitive Psychology


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