On Monday 11 May 2009 08:14:07 pm Adam Carter wrote:
> > I'm curious how other sysadmins rapidly deploy a slew of new Gentoo
> > systems? In this case I'm setting up many dozens of Gentoo servers
> > inside of VMware ESX and having to destroy and redeploy said systems
> > regularly.
> >
> > The "hardware" (virtual, of course) varies ever so slightly, so
> > cloning (via ESX or dd) is not an option.
>
> Different hardware shouldn't preclude this approach. Just make sure all the
> relevant modules are built and the OS should load what it needs.
I keep a master copy of a generic gentoo install on a dvd. It's configured and
compiled as x86, i686 for both the applications and kernel. I build all the
kernel drivers I would ever need and update it as needed with each new round
of hardware purchases or driver updates. Then when I need to put another
gentoo box online, I simply copy the contents of the dvd to the new
harddrive, run grub and install the boot loader onto the new drive and I'm
done the hard part. Once done, I pop the new drive into the new computer and
boot it up. At the commandline I finish tailoring the install by tweaking USE
in make.conf and recompiling, but only as necessary. Add in whatever drivers
is needs and I'm done... It's worked everytime I've done this... YMMV. :')
Saves tons of time building a box from scratch via the stages...
--
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From the desk of:
Jerome D. McBride
21:13:43 up 10 days, 2:41, 4 users, load average: 2.04, 1.96, 1.92
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