[WBEL-users] Like a rescue CD, . but not really - to load various distributions from Network

[Will McDonald]

On 22/01/06, Alon <js at wsco.com> wrote:
> I have a server that I want to load 5 Clean OS install on it.
> It is an OnDemand OS install.
>
> My end user can ask me to install:
>
> WBEL 3.0
> WBEL 4.0
> CentOS 3.6
> CentOS 4.2
> Windows 2003 Server
>
> Each one of these installs should wipe the IDE HD clean and start a fresh
> install, or load an image of pre-installed setup.
>
> At my disposal are the following:
>
> 1 USB Disk On Key with 250MB with Write Protection after configuration.
> 1 IDE 80GB HD
> 1 Repository FTP Server with plenty of room for ISO's , Images etc (about
> 30GB of available space).

If the repository FTP server's under your control you could set that
up as a TFTP server for PXE and Kickstart (at least for the RHEL-like
systems) boot/install. You could have this configured so the machine
PXE boots every time, presents the user with a menu with install
options but defaults to booting from local disk after a set time.

I posted this last year with some content from our wiki on PXE and Kickstart...

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2005-August/009524.html

(You'll need to cut 'n paste the attachment content into a new file.)

Have a read through these links too...

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q04-028.pdf

http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php#config

http://www.unixpeople.com/HOWTO/pxe.html

https://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-list/2005-May/msg00064.html

And a quick Google on PXE and Windows impies it'd be possible to build
Windows boxes from the Linux boot server too.

Will.