[K12OSN] Update from FC2 to FC5 via SSH?

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, 2006-08-10 at 10:36 -0500, Jim Kronebusch wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:23:29 -0700, Huck wrote
> > mail cd's to the locations and walk them through it over the phone 
> > Jim ;)
> 
> The drive is actually only about 5 minutes from my house.  It isn't a problem
> for me to go there and install with CD's.  I was simply using this as a test
> bed for the future.  As I forsee within the next year having servers that are
> a few hours away.  Now I know that I need to plan to drive to update them.  I
> was hoping for a solution I could script to run from a single location once
> every summer within the comfort of my home.  Turns out that was a pipe dream.

There is an intermediate between talking someone through an install and
doing it full-auto remotely if you have network connectivity.  Download
the isos somewhere at the location where they are nfs-exported or on
a hard drive partition you don't need to format on the system in
question.  Have someone on site burn a copy of the 1st CD or mail
them a copy.  Have them boot the machine with the CD and type the
appropriate command at the boot prompt, including 'askmethod' if
using NFS, and vncconnect= with the IP address of the vncviewer you
have started in listen mode.  Then you do the rest from the comfort
of your favorite chair.  You may have to do some tricks with ssh
tunnels if the networks have private addresses at both ends and
it can be messy if the box you are installing is your only dhcp
server for the location.  I normally do major changes for remote
sites on swappable drives that someone else can change out, but
if I had to do a lot of them live over the network with unskilled
on-site help I'd probably build a vmware image of a k12ltsp server
that could be run on any available windows or linux box to provide
the amenities of DHCP, NFS and ssh while the main server was
being rebuilt.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com