Expert Shell Scripting

CHAPTER 38Linux Gold-System Build

Building a system manually can be fun. Building many systems manually is tedious and prone to error, especially when all systems should be built in exactly the same way. For this reason, Kickstart by Red Hat, Jumpstart by Sun, and other utilities were created to automate a network-based system build that is based on preset parameters. These utilities work well when you are building new systems on a regular basis. The downside of this method is that a client is required to be on the network and it needs to have access to the server to do a system build. Also, a build server needs to be set up and maintained, but if you are building only a moderate number of systems, it may not be worth the extra effort to set ...