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Subsections

Introduction

Where to find it

You can find the latest version of Replicator at :

     http://replicator.sourceforge.net

Purpose

If you are the system administrator of a networked site, how can you (re)install quickly a computer in generally less than fives minutes (even less if you install a set of similar machines)?

You want to customize the configuration of a computer only once (on the model computer) for your site. Moreover you want any new target computer to have almost the same configuration as the model. The target will be mostly identical to the model except:

The present software, called ``Replicator'', will automates the installation of target. More precisely it consists of a set of easy-to-use scripts to prepare the installation, the result of the preparation being a floppy that when booted on the target, will almost automatically install it (by default, it asks confirmation first!).

Overview of the replication

The copying process is composed of the following steps:

  1. Installation and configuration of Replicator on the computer miniroot-server which usualy is also the model you want to replicate,,
  2. Creation and setup of a tiny NFS root filesystem onto miniroot-server,
  3. Creation of bootfloppy onto miniroot-server,
  4. Configuration of remote acces to the model,
  5. Quick install of the computer target with the floppy.

Warnings

  1. The whole directory tree of your model machine will be duplicated according to the ``update rules'' mention in 4.3.6. If you created non-standard directories (e.g. mountpoints) which you don't want to duplicate, then edit the update rules accordingly.
  2. This software is experimental (but tested and used in production environment), be sure that for every machine where you execute one of the scripts or for every machine that you include in one the configurations files, all the volumes accessible from the machine (either local or NFS-mounted) are properly backup'ed,
  3. At this point, it is recommended that you understand a bit of perl and sh scripts, to be able to diagnose potential problems.

What's new since 2.0

What's new since 1.X

TODO

What I'm working on:


next up previous contents
Next: Using Replicator Up: Replicator 2.0.1 for Debian/GNU Previous: Disclaimer   Contents
root 2001-06-04