[plug] System Restore CD

[Craig Ringer]

On Wed, 2005-05-11 at 10:09 +1000, Onno Benschop wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've got a Debian gateway machine that is running in the bush, that is 
> going to be living at a client's premises. The client is not 
> particularly computer savvy and I wish to make a system restore CD, sort 
> of like a GHOST or ISO image that self-installs and writes all of the 
> gateway settings onto the hard-disk. This is to allow me to do two things:
> 
>    1. Offer the client a means to recover from a hard-disk failure.
>    2. Offer me a means to update his settings by giving him a new CD
>       that magically re-installs his "new" gateway.
> 
> I'm a little daunted on how I might create such a magical CD and was 
> wondering if anyone around here had some suggestions.

I built a network-booted system to do something similar. I can send you
the (admittedly rather icky) Python script that does the co-ordination
if you like. It probably wouldn't need much adaptation for running off a
CD.

You'd need Python, Partimage, and a few other bits and pieces such as
sfdisk.

I wasn't able to find something that satisfied my needs (I don't build
these things for fun) but I was looking for a fully automatic image-
based /network/ install. Maybe there's something out there for running
off CD.

-- 
Craig Ringer