Topic: Write the Reinst'n-Disk to Client!

[Wei]

When you think about it... there are several reasons for the subj. suggestion:

- e-smith is to be "locked in a closet" & admin'd remotely

- to create such a disk is available on the e-smith-manager menu
  (i.e. not at initial installation, if I recall correctly)

- the format of the Reinstallation Disk is DOS, facilitating

OK, so there are one or two reasons why Not:

- Mac clients may not know how to write to local DOS formatted disks

...nevertheless, it would be nice not to have to find the key to the closet
...and - for that matter - not to have to leave one's desk at all for such a disk

(But - Hey! - we also argued that e-smith should keep Zipped copies
of the iso's along side the unZipped originals, i.e. through all those
rc's that we all downloaded...)

We love the product... but would still like to see a few improvements...

TIA

[Gordon Rowell]

Wei wrote:
> [...]
> ...nevertheless, it would be nice not to have to find the key
> to the closet
> ...and - for that matter - not to have to leave one's desk at
> all for such a disk

It's harder than it may first appear, and can't be done in an automated
fashion. You shouldn't need to create the floppy very often as it only
contains the configuration data.

> (But - Hey! - we also argued that e-smith should keep Zipped
> copies  of the iso's along side the unZipped originals, i.e. through
> all those  rc's that we all downloaded...)

We have tried this and people end up downloading both

Our mirror sites have asked us to only keep the ISO image, and we have
found zipping the images causes too much support load.

rsync provides a _very_ efficient way for you to update between versions.
Much more efficient than downloading zipped images, and it is installed
on your e-smith server by default.

> We love the product... but would still like to see a few
> improvements...

Thanks for your comments. We try to please, and naturally focus our efforts
on requests from our partners and registered customers as these help to
fund further development.

Gordon