[NCLUG] clone installs

[Jim Hutchinson]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 11:45 AM, Bob Proulx <bob at proulx.com> wrote:

> Are you asking for yourself?  Or are you trying to drum up assistance
> for person asking the question on launchpad?


Just drumming up support. I have the beginnings of an answer but not enough
to really help. I thought maybe I could point someone with more knowledge to
them. 1400 computers would obviously be a business or school so helping them
move to Linux would be a pretty good payoff.


> There are many different ways to do this.  I have used SystemImager
> previously and found it worked quite well for a large number of
> installs.  For Debian/Ubuntu FAI (Fully Automated Install) I am told
> works well.  If the disks are all identical then dd copying the disks
> would probably be fastest.  Nortan Ghost?  Many other methods.
>
> All of those suffer from one problem in the case of the launchpad
> question.  Cameron says, "Please note there are only 5 of us working,
> and we HAVE NEVER used Lunix before.  Please help us and be
> descriptive as much as you can thank you".  Note the spelling, grammar
> and punctuation are verbatim from the request.  That is going to be
> difficult because I don't know of any solutions that are suitable for
> a non-technical person to roll out on 1400 machines.


Certainly a concern but this is their call so I thought a bit of info might
help them get started.

I personally would probably set up a pxe boot that then did a dd disk
> copy from a network location.  Then it would be a matter of grinding
> through booting 1400 laptops from the network.  Ugh.  Organize a crew
> of student volunteers to help to make it go quicker.  Alternatively a
> usb boot would be reasonable too.
>
> An additional problem that wasn't asked will be who and how will a
> small group of non-technical people support 1400 laptops when the
> inevitable problems start to appear?  Even though everything starts
> working fine I have confidence in human nature that when 1400 people
> are involved that 1%-5% of them will be active participants in the
> breaking of them.


That pretty optimistic. I would think it's more like 95%. Sooner or later
everyone breaks something or just doesn't know what they are doing and needs
some sort of help. I'm not official tech support for my school but I have
fielded calls from just about everyone.

Thanks for the info. I'll pass it on.

-- 
Jim (Ubuntu geek extraordinaire)
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