[Novalug] Kickstart (was Re: Need some guidance)

[American Dave]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 10:41:49AM -0500, Beartooth wrote:

>  	Hmmm .... All I know of kickstart is that something by 
> that name exists.

Kickstart is a way to automate the installation of Red Hat and other
distros.  You can quite simply install Linux, but Kickstart is flexible
enough to do just about anything.

Combine Kickstart with PXE-booting and you've got a pretty compelling
imaging solution.

>  	I run six or eight machines (all on a home LAN, at least 
> when booted), and never quite manage to get all the same things 
> installed on all the machines (or at least, on all but the 
> laptops)... 

>  	Would kickstart be good for what you might call 
> pre-synchronizing them?

In short, yes, if you run pretty similar setups and you trash
them frequently.  If you like to image hosts once every year or so, it's
probably not worth the effort.  

There's lots of experimenting with Kickstart, so weigh whether that's
appealing.  In many large Linux installations Kickstart is a must.

-A. Dave