[gentoo-amd64] Re: new graphical installer

["Duncan" <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Thierry de Coulon <tcoulon@decoulon.ch> posted
200608111307.46197.tcoulon@decoulon.ch, excerpted below, on  Fri, 11 Aug
2006 13:07:46 +0200:

> Anyway, you have to download the iso file to be able tu burn it to CD.
> I'm not aware of any way of installing Gentoo on many pc's without
> either compiling it pc after pc, or possibly creating an image of the
> first install and copying it (provided all pcs are the same, of course).

Note portage FEATURES=buildpkg, one of my favorite features, for a number
of reasons.  Once you have the first one setup, all others can install
using the binary packages created by the first one.  Thus, the process
becomes much like installing a regular binary distribution, only of course
with Gentoo details, and using the binary packages (emerge -K) created for
the first one.

Also note that with a group of computers, it's possible to use distcc to
share in the compiling job, once they all get minimally setup, anyway. 
Thus, I'd setup the first one thru the emerge --emptytree system step (or
maybe even before that, with just the stage-3 and networking stuff), ensure
it's configured for networking, then setup the others to the same level,
and get distcc merged on all of them. After that, you can use distcc to
while compiling everything else, and the job will go far faster.

Of course, that assumes that you want to use the same USE flags and CFLAGS
on all of them.  If not, you can't share packages, but you can still use
distcc to share the compiling.

For big installs, you can use dev-util/catalyst, the Gentoo release creator
meta-tool that releng uses for Gentoo's own releases, and customize the
install as desired for your own purposes.  Obviously, it'll be more work
to figure that out and use it if you are only doing a few installs, but
once you get into the double-digits, it could be easier using catalyst to
customize your own install, and time you reach fifty, catalyst should save
you some major time and hassle, repeatedly configuring the same thing
fifty times.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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