Kickstart Methodology

[Erik Sjölund]

We use

http://xml2hostconf.sourceforge.net

successfully for about 50 computers. Everything is generated out of one
xml file + configuration files placed under a directory.

What are the benefits of this compared to manually writing kickstart
files for each type of computer configuration you have?

* What would normally be included in the %post-section is instead being
installed as generated configuration RPMs. This has a consequence that
there is no problem of keeping already installed machines and new
installed machines in sync. The configuration rpms are pulled in by
"apt-get dist-upgrade" or "yum update".

* Minimizing redundant information. %post-sections in different
kickstart-files tend to have a lot of common text. Group the commands
into different configuration RPMs and just create dependencies on the
configuration RPMs that you want.

* Documentation of how all computers are configured is automatically
generated in HTML-format.

cheers,
Erik Sjölund