utility analguous to M$ sysprep

Does anyone happen to know if there is a tool for redhat/fedora
analguous to Microsoft's sysprep? I wanted to make image based
installations of Redhat/Fedora stripped of machine specific data. I
know that kickstart is capable of such deployments, but a frozen image
is preferable in this instance,

tia,
kaleal

"inrouted" <inrouted@gmail.com> writes:

> Does anyone happen to know if there is a tool for redhat/fedora
> analguous to Microsoft's sysprep? I wanted to make image based
> installations of Redhat/Fedora stripped of machine specific data. I
> know that kickstart is capable of such deployments, but a frozen image
> is preferable in this instance,

Google tells me there is no such thing.

I got this from an MS site:

What does Sysprep do? Main purpose...Changes the security identifier
(SID) on a cloned installation of Windows 2000

I think that explains why.

Pretty much you can just take an image backup of an install
and restore it to as many machines as you want. Your
particular environment might require some adjustments
to the install, I think you will find UNIX scripting
tools (like the shell or perl) will take care
of any adjustments you find you need.

I don't know how much time that will save, a typical
Linux install takes a half hour to an hour. Unless
all your machines are identical, cloned images are
going to require some fiddling too.

I've seen Sysprep installs go bad and take days
to complete. The few Linux clones that I've
done went smoothly.

> I don't know how much time that will save, a typical
> Linux install takes a half hour to an hour. Unless
> all your machines are identical, cloned images are
> going to require some fiddling too.

The time involved (be it Windows or Linux) isn't the initial
installation, it's package updates and installation/configuration of
third-party software. Whether you're talking about Windows Update,
"up2date -u", or "emerge sync", the time is certainly non-trivial, and if
you have a number of machines to do, duplicting all of that bandwidth and
time is unnecessary.

Of course, a proxy server can speed things up, but it's still nicer to
plug in a few hard drives, run "dd", stick them in machines, boot to
single-user, make minor adjustments, and be done.

With Linux, you still have to (or SHOULD) do a few things like change the
SSH keys, but they're generally pretty quick and easy. It's certainly
preferable to a sysprepped image, although I've never had a sysprep go badly
as you mentioned.

steve

Thanks for the responses:

As for my reference to sysprep, it was a reference to a tool that you
could create a generic server install, stripped of any machine specific
references. The installations I had had in mind were for a utility
type environment, where you have blades connected to a san etc.
Provisioning blades quickly might be done by something ala kickstart,
but you could also just copy bitwise an already created image.

The dd statement above is close to what i was looking for, but desired
something usable on a grander and more time efficient scale.

Thanks for the input,
Kal

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:00:04 -0800, kaleal wrote:

> As for my reference to sysprep, it was a reference to a tool that you
> could create a generic server install, stripped of any machine specific
> references. The installations I had had in mind were for a utility
> type environment, where you have blades connected to a san etc.

Maybe have a look at SystemImager:
http://www.systemimager.org/