[arch-releng] Archlinux automated via PXE

[Thomas S Hatch]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 5:28 PM, Nico Schottelius <
nico-archlinux-releng at schottelius.org> wrote:

> Hey Thomas,
>
> Thomas S Hatch [Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 05:27:16PM -0600]:
> > 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.
>
> Interesting approach, we're doing something similar with nfsroot
> sometimes.
>
> Though for this issue in particular, I'm more interested in
> installing real systems, so I could in theory drive my business
> with archlinux.
>
> > 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
>
> Had a look at that, does not really match what I'm searching for.
>
> > Also, are you using puppet? I could not live without it in the
> datacenter.
>
> We've just migrated away from puppet to cdist for various reasons,
> including, but not limited to push vs. pull approach, no high level
> language / interpreter requirements and hopefull more clean error
> messages.
>
> You can find more about cdist at
> http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/cdist/.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Nico
>
> --
> PGP key: 7ED9 F7D3 6B10 81D7 0EC5  5C09 D7DC C8E4 3187 7DF0
>

I will have to look into cdist.

I have been working on a project for distributed system management called
salt recently that could be used as the push medium for something like
cdist:
https://github.com/thatch45/salt