Topic: Automating e-smith Installation

[ashley bowyer]

I am thinking of using e-smith in my comany and plan to role out approx 15 servers different IP address, domains, users in various sites.  My question is is there a way to automate this process instead of installing all the information 15 times like a menu sytem where I can enter IP address, domain i-bays etc and it will go away and build it .  Thank You

[Alejandro]

Ashley:
Maybe this is really stupid... but at least..  give me the chance to be stupid

I would install e-smith with the config settings common  to most of your servers and then i would make a reinstallation disk of it.
in the reinstallation disk there is an file "ks.cfg" that holds the information to perform a clean install of a configured e-smith server,
if you could edit this file and save specific data of each of your server, you will have a multiple server installation disk just changing this file,
or may someone can write a script that with a few questions sets ks.cfg file for each machine.
and you are done,
Difficult part is editing thi file, but maybe someone has a better idea!
hope being helpfull
Alejandro.

[Charles Wannop]

Not so silly!!!
As an added twist, how about make a boot floppy from the image on the CD, then edit the kick start file on the floppy to suit your network settings (you can read the existing file or copy from the re-install disk). Set the systems to boot from floppy and you should be away.

Chas.

[Darrell May]

and I've posted a 'How to add multiple users to e-smith 4.1.x ' script.  Available here: http://www.e-smith.org/cgi-bin/contrib.cgi

Darrell

[Scott Smith]

I have considerable familiarity with the reinstallation disk feature. I use it for two things.

First, as a boot disk to reinstall a server so it connects immediately to the network. This was the feature's intended purpose.

Second, to create an installation boot disk that presets options to my preferred values. I created a disk using a system that was configured with the default values I want to use, then I tweaked the ks.cfg file to finish the task. Especially the post section.

Works like a charm!

[Ashley Bowyer]

Scott,

Is there a syntax list for this file ?  eg can I setup default I-bays and printers etc

Thanks,

Ashley

[Scott Smith]

> Is there a syntax list for this file ?  eg can I setup
> default I-bays and printers etc

Look for the following line in ks.cfg:

     %post

From that point on, ks.cfg is copied to a file in /tmp and execed as a bash shell script. You can run any commands that exist on the system. I use a lot of

     /sbin/e-smith/db

commands to set parameters prior to the call to

     /sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save

As I add quite a bit of stuff to the system, I have ks.cfg build a script in /root that I exec after the normal post-install reboot. This script mounts a floppy that contains the remainder of my stuff, and execs another bash script on the floppy to finish the work.