Changing a company from 100% Windows to 100% FreeBSD.

[Alex de Kruijff]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 06:27:25AM -0800, Lee Mx wrote:
> I am switching about 40 desktop's running different versions of
> windows over to freebsd.  One of the primary requirements is
> OpenOffice-1.1 and I've always run it locally on my laptop.
> I'm considering running it over the LAN which would mean that
> I suppose that I would NFS mount the binary and do the network
> install.  Could someone who has done this tell me if they
> recommend running it on the network or if it would be better to
> just install it on each of the 40 machines.  This company and
> every user, uses Office daily, especially excel.

Running it over the network should be posible. It does come at a
high performance cost. The local hard disk has a much higher respond
rate. Personaly, i would go for the independed workstation.

> 
> Also if anyone has any other suggestions that would simplify
> anything in the chain from the initial installation to periodic
> upgrading, it would be highly appreciated.

I'm not sure if you looking for this, but you may wanna read this:
http://www.infrastructures.org/ - Its all about how to effienctly manage
you enterprise cluster. Its quite a bit of work to setup at first and
saves you lots of work later.

> I'm planning on having a central server that will be cvsuping
> updated sources and ports daily, making world and portupgrade
> -Rruap periodically.  I plan to NFS mount /usr/ports and not
> have local copies to not have to update them. I'm thinking that
> I could then, fairly easily upgrade the other machines by just
> installing the packages when needed.  It could also serve as a
> local repository for updating the operating system or I suppose
> that I could also NFS mount /usr/src and /usr/obj and do an
> installworld to upgrade, too.  Again any opinions, observations
> or suggestion are highly appreciated.  I've never changed
> 100% to FreeBSD before :-)

This would mean that you have to manage every workstation manualy. If
there all alike you could just configure one and let the other
synchonise themselfs. You may wanna have a look at the port rsync.

-- 
Alex

Articles based on solutions that I use:
http://www.kruijff.org/alex/index.php?dir=docs/FreeBSD/