Creating a mini install disk, for particular needs

[Francois Tigeot]

On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 12:56:07AM +0100, Chris Phillips wrote:
> 
> I am trying to find a suitable alternative to our crappy, solid-state, 
> thin client boxes (because they are so awfully unreliable & the 
> manufacturer has also gone down the tubes).
> 
> We need a fairly painless way, to roll out a fresh install onto some 
> random i386 hardware we have lying around (there's a plentiful supply), 
> for any new users, who require a basic functioning GUI, with access to 
> graphical email client, web browser & 'rdesktop' (for the windows 
> applications, that they are all hooked on).

You may also try to use your PCs as thin clients.

Check out http://www.thinbsd.org/ , it is a small FreeBSD based system
to create X11 or Windows terminals.

(Don't be afraid by the release dates, the project is not dead).

> What I'd love to be able to do, is to create a FreeBSD (it's my 
> favorite) CD, that contains all that I need for these basic systems. 
> Either, set up so that the install is automated, with just the minimal 
> of setup, or so that it's got all the packages that I want & can all be 
> installed straight off the CD (perhaps by choosing the "All Packages" 
> option).
> 
> Is what I've described actually possible?

There are informations to script the install process in sysinstall(8)

I had to install FreeBSD and Linux on dozens of workstations before and
found out the CD thing was not the most practicable way.
I ended up doing a fairly complete install on a master machine and cloning
it via PXE booting and dd (disks were identicals).

Check out this paper for a similar technique:
http://www.pix.net/software/pxeboot/archive/SANE.pdf

-- 
Francois Tigeot