opensuse on many old machines

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

I have to install opensuse 11.2 (64bit) on several old machines which only have a CD (not DVD) reader.

The only CD I found was the “net install” one.

The process is quite laborious, because though there are only a few changes I want done to the install defaults (no ext4 for example), the fact I have to do it several times over makes it all tedious. The downloading of all the packages can be quite slow at times.

Of course, PXE would be a solution to all this, but I’m unsure to what extent.

What I would like is to be able to change the installer itself with my own chosen defaults and then remaster a CD with more of the pakages on the CD so I can minimise downloading.

Has anybody done anything like this? Advice welcome. Thanks.

2

Could you give us some details on the hardware, how much RAM, video card/chip etc

The live CD’s are installable and there are versions with light weight desktops/window managers also available.

EDIT: Also how many machines?

3

Hi,

Have you considered suse studio: http://susestudio.com/

Also you say the only CD was a net install, what about the live CD iso files?

Regards,
Barry.

4

Many thanks for your comments.

I hadn’t seen suse studio before. Similar to slax, it would seem … which is also good. Will have a closer look.

Actually it was just 4 machines, and I’ve finished now. But I had alot of false starts, and had to reboot numerous times.

I had not checked out the live CD’s. I suppose I was stuck with the predujice that live cd’s aren’t ideal for installing a full blown distro.

Anyhow, thanks again for the suggestions.

5

There are several separate, but related problems here, and I’m not sure which of them is/are your priority/priorities. However, you may find some of the following helpful:

You don’t say how many ‘several’ is, but Auotoyast may be helpful to you, particularly if several is ‘quite a few’. You may also want to look at this on network installs (Network-Install-HOWTO).

Another approach is to either create a local repo or to use a cache (squid) to ensure that there is not excessive use of internet bandwidth and to result in an improved speed of install.