/dev/mapper means the system is using LVM.

You say you are getting a blank screen.
Be more specific.

Does the system POST?
Do you see the GRUB screen?
Does the screen turn blank after booting? At exactly which point?
Does the GUI not start? (Gawdforbade putting a GUI on a server)

LVM does not preclude booting from this hard disk in a different system.
Hardware does not need to be the same. Not at all. udev is smart enough to figure out most.
Processor architecture must be identical.

jlinkels

No, there is no need for the hardware to be the same. It may be necessary to deactivate "Secure Boot" in the BIOS (or vice versa), depending on whether or not you want to use MBR on all computers or UEFI on all computers (bearing in mind older computers can't even do UEFI at all). Other than that, a hard drive can just be moved and it will boot.

Now, cloning using dd may be problematic in certain cases - when using btrfs, in particular, you have to be absolutely sure that two hard drive clones are NEVER hooked up to the same computer at the same time. And I'm not sure, but things may be break with LVM also, if two hard drive clones are hooked up to the same computer at the same time.

But with plain old MBR and ext4 partitions? Not really a problem. You just have to be wary of the possibility of mounting the wrong drive's partition if the UUID is the same.

It is LVM. This is not used by most linux installers by default, but it is used by default with certain linux distributions. You have not told us what linux distribution has been causing you a problem. Please do so.

If you do not understand LVM, you have two options:

1) Learn LVM, and learn it well.

or

2) Simply don't use LVM.

Unless you have a specific compelling reason to use LVM, don't use it. I don't use LVM, and I don't miss its capabilities.

how old is old and how new is new? Are you trying to boot drives from the old on the new?

EFI and later UEFI have been gradually introduced from the early 2000s, and are universal in all pcs from 2012. That certainly affects booting. Another change was MBR --> GPT for partition tables, and IDE --> SATA for drives. In m laptop (Samsung NP350C-A06UK - Vintage 2013) a GPT internal disk automatically invokes UEFI, regardless of BIOS setting.

That's why I suggested PXE - a network system, which avoids all that.

That's a good point, but I thought your suggestion was to run an installer via PXE, which would take a lot of time and effort for hundreds of computers. The OP wants to only set things up on one computer, and then clone it to hundreds of identical installs. Not run hundreds of base installs and then customizing them identically hundreds of times.

The simplest way to do what the OP wants is simply to use pretty much any desired distribution and install onto an MBR drive with ext4 partition. AFAIK, even the few which default to using LVM still allow installing onto a normal MBR with ext4. MBR is good for drives up to 2TB, and there aren't many enterprises which need banks of hundreds of computers with more than 2TB drives in each (hint - they already have plenty of expert server folks who know what they're doing). For most enterprises, those hundreds of computers will be client workstations rather than servers; it will make more sense to install much smaller SSDs than 3+TB spinning hard drives on them.

That said, I do think that with hundreds of computers it can be good to do PXE boot of the OS (not an installer, the actual OS). But it does require some more expertise to set up and administer, and you need to consider how to mitigate the bandwidth requirements. That's why I made the different suggestions for NFS root and RAMBOOT (tmpfs root).

Are you including all generic drivers for a system (would think that's default for most I know Debian asks one or the other:) or just targeting the ones needed from the first install?

The Debian installer does not ask which drivers to install. It just installs pretty much everything that is commonly used (and which also follows Debian's Software Guidelines for open source software).

You can optionally install other software - especially non-free wifi and video drivers - but this is generally done after the initial install from within the OS itself, not by the installer. I usually install the wifi drivers for all of my computers, knowing that I will eventually swap and/or clone the drive to other laptops at some point (maybe). It's easier for me to just install everything that I might need later on if I move things around.

Don't have time to search or do a full install for the exact question Debian installs ask me but this seems close enough: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.p...=71707#p399893

I have done Debian 6 installs, and it did not ask me this question. Maybe it's a step which only shows up if you manually step through various steps that the default install does not normally expose.

Here's a screenshot list of a Debian 6 install (it's very similar to a current Debian 9 install; Debian 9 gives you more options for different desktop environments to install):

http://go2linux.garron.me/linux/2011...nd-review-891/

There is no point during the install where it asks anything about the initrd.

Even as far back as 6 I've done "expert install" (sorry) and to anyone new don't be thrown if you'r not an expert, it is the best way to install.

Add: I'm off to work, have fun.

You can remaster Antix & MX Linux to have whatever programs you want on it & then use that to install to any machine.
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

But with the amount of machines you have, I'd duplicate your remastered system so as to install in as many as possible at the same time.
(But I would still suggest using a server to do the installs to so many machines.)

What benefits are there to the expert install? I have always used the default install with manual partitioning (instead of the options to use the whole disk). I have done this because I have found it to minimize the amount of effort I have to put in.

Fundamentally, my choice of using Debian over various Debian and Ubuntu based distributions I've tried out over the years has revolved around minimizing headaches and effort. Long term maintainability has really been the deal killer for most Debian/Ubuntu based distributions, vs plain old Debian Stable. My original RAMBOOT hack involved a lot of culling of unneeded files to minimize OS space, but this meant that maintaining the system involved reboots and (admittedly automated) remastering of the OS image file. I abandoned RAMBOOT for years due to the extra maintenance effort, until my computers had enough RAM for a far easier to maintain RAMBOOT hack (the current version is easy to maintain, even across distribution upgrades, with no "remastering" required).

But I simply have not tried the expert install more than maybe once or twice accidentally - or maybe to use LILO instead of GRUB. I don't know what potential benefits I'm missing.

You see* more, get* more... that's all.

I agree with IsaacKuo. I have made over a hundred Debian installs and I never felt the need to do an expert installation. Neither for workstation, nor for server installations. My requirements for disk partitions are varying (a lot!) but every option is covered by the standard partitioner. Including RAID, LVM and encryption.

Some examples of expert options?

jlinkels