kickstart install using NFS

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, Mat Harris wrote:

> i know this question is not directly related to the origin of this thread,
> but one you guys has to know:
> 
> when I am installing from nfs/ftp/http, what format does the source have to
> be in? i have the rh8 cds (5), so do i just mkisofs them into their original
> iso filenames or do i have to copy the contents in a certain way?
> 
> thanks in advance for what is a fairly lame question

I think that all you want is the standard RH tree installed in a
standard directory heirarchy/filesystem (mirrored is a lot easier and
cheaper and more up to date than from CD's, but if you have a really
slow connection you might be forced to use CDs to set up the original).

For example, the contents of the URL path pointed to in the ks file I
just posted are;

[   ] CHANGELOG 1k  
[   ] COPYING 18k  
[   ] RH-RELEASE-NOTES 17k  
[DIR] RedHat/ -  
[DIR] bin/ -  
[DIR] dosutils/ -  
[DIR] headers/ -  
[DIR] images/ -  
[DIR] other-pkgs/ -  
[   ] pkg-changelog 3k  

(which should look familiar:-) where ./RedHat/RPMS is (as always) the
path to the actual RPMs.  So I think that you'd just make a faithful
copy of the mounted contents of the CD with this directory structure,
and then ensure that the contents of the other CDs are copied into the
appropriate paths.  Then export the directory either via web, ftp, or
nfs, where web seems to be the most robust and probably the most secure.
There are lots of tools you can use to copy over the files preserving
paths -- hopefully you know how to use at least one, and remember to
mirror if you have the bandwidth instead to pick up the updates (so you
aren't subsequently vulnerable to e.g. slapper because you install a
werbser from a CD with unpatched ssl/apache).

  rgb

> 
> 

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu