I added a few things to make serial console work over PXE/IPMI recently... so at least you can do manual installs that way. On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 16:27, Thomas S Hatch <thatch45@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Nico Schottelius < nico-archlinux-releng@schottelius.org> wrote:
Good morning devs,
I'm running a big pool of Linux installations in the ETH Zurich [0] and from time to time I am interested in giving Archlinux a try for a big installation.
But the lack of a very easy automated way to retrieve networking images, like provided with OpenBSD or Debian & variants, makes me drop back (cuni [0] got a list of easily netinstallable Os).
I'm aware that I can download the ISO, grab the kernel + initrd and have it running, but it's a pretty cumbersome approach.
Thus I'd like to discuss whether there is no easy way to provide kernel + initrd in a standard location?
Secondly I'd be interested in seeing a standard way on how to automate the installation, which could probably a wikipage "Archlinux in big environments".
I'm wondering what your opinions are regarding those two topics and whether there'll be some changes mid term that may make archlinux able to be a canditate for automatic installations.
Have a nice evening,
Nico
[0] cuni: http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/cuni/
-- PGP key: 7ED9 F7D3 6B10 81D7 0EC5 5C09 D7DC C8E4 3187 7DF0
I really need to get my stuff on this out into the wild, I use ramdisk network boots, I had to modify the mkinitcpio but it works amazingly well. So I never install systems, I just reboot them into new root images.
The problem is that I need to refine it a great deal.
If you are however interested in automating virtual machine installs you can use varch: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Varch
Sorry I don't have this stuff out yet, I won't have time to do it for at least 3 or 4 months, but I am happy to field questions!
Also, are you using puppet? I could not live without it in the datacenter.
-Thomas S Hatch -Arch Linux Trusted User