[ILUG] Bootable Backup Tapes/Install Servers

[Niall O Broin]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 12:30:10PM -0000, HAMILTON,DAVID (HP-Ireland,ex1) wrote:
 
> Is there an easy way to make bootable backup tapes of Linux Boxes?

Not that I know of or can imagine - to be able to boot a particular medium,
the BIOS must provide support, and I've never come across any SCSI BIOS
which does that - there's not even a standard for bootable tapes - Sun, HP
etc. do their own thing via their BIOS (yeah, I know they don't call them
BIOS).

> Bootable install servers would also be good. Not just network booting a
> Redhat install, something to allow custom builds to be installed in one
> step.

What about a bootable CD ? I have in the last few months spent much more
time than I ever intended to making the ILUG bootable business card CD,
based on the original version from Linuxcare. Of course this led to my
having a pretty good understanding of the build process which recently came
home to roost when I had a small consultancy job to do which involves
providing a CD from which to rebuild a machine from scratch. It is trivial
to modify the CD's init script (yes, init is a script on the BBC :-)) to
partition a disk as desired, build filesystems and then populate filesystems
from tar/cpio archives on the CD. The BBC itself occupies about 50 MB thus
leaving about 600M for the OS and application install. If that's enough, you
could have two CDs, either doing a second stage install or booting from
both, one after the other. If that still wouldn't be enough, and I could
certainly imagine situations where it wouldn't be, then you could have the
first CD do the install off tape.

The bootable CD comes with a script to help build the CD and a description
of the process. It's not a dummy's guide, but it's not something a dummy
should be trying to do anyway :-)

You can get the BBC image at ftp://ftp.blackstar.co.uk/pub/ILUG/ILUG_BBC.iso
or I can send you one burnt onto a business card sized CD for £3 incl. P&P.
Just send me a cheque and your delivery address. I'm also available for
consultancy if you want to implement such an installable CD for a particular
project.

> Something along the lines of HP's Ignite product would be ideal.

Not familiar with that, though I've used Sun's jumpstart a lot, and I
suppose it's a similar idea. Do you have any needs in this area which would
not be satisfied by what I've described above ?



Kindest regards,



Niall  O Broin


BTW I saw somebody with a RedHat System Administrator's Rescue CD (or
somesuch) at Linuxworld - another bootable business card CD. Would anyone
have one of those they could give me - I'd like to take a look at what RH
have done. As I'm a gadget magpie, I'd like one of the CDs but a copy of its
contents onto a normal CD would be fine too.