[OT] Upgrading from RH73 to FC2

[Thomas Cameron]

On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 14:32 -0400, MW Mike Weiner (5028) wrote:
> This may sound like a silly question, but i feel compelled to ask it
> anyway. OK, i have *several* rh73 servers in my environment, that i need
> to migrate to fc2. 

Why FC2?  It is end of life.  Why not wait a couple of weeks and use
FC4?

> OK, not a real major deal, but what i was thinking
> was to build an internal yum repo (for updates, etc) and also put the
> fc2 install base on this box so i can do nfs installs, etc. 

You can do this, it is easy.  Just put your Yum repo in one directory
structure and the directory structure off the FC CDs in another.  Share
them via NFS or FTP or HTTP.

> Now, here is
> where my silly thinking/question comes in. Is it possible to use this
> "repository" setup but also read in say an anaconda-kickstart file? I
> mean without really doing kickstart? And, if not, which i suspect is the
> answer, what is the best way to take this yum repo box and turn it into
> a Kickstart server so i can do remote upgrades? I would rather not have
> to manually do >400 servers via yum from rh73 to fc2...

Without stretching too hard, I can imagine a script which will push the
appropriate kernel and initrd.img out to each machine, modify lilo.conf,
run /sbin/lilo and reboot.  The lilo.conf file would pass a URL to the
install kernel for the ks.cfg file, and upgrade the machine hands-free.

> Any ideas would be graciously welcome.
> Michael Weiner

More info would be helpful - are all 400 servers identical, or close to
identical?

Thomas