I'm configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0.
I want to make an image and deploy it out to several other intel base server. I'm already running a NIM server for my AIX boxes. Would like to keep using NIM if possible. Not sure how to with it being intel servers.

Any suggestions for a deployment software?
Power Quest?

Please advise

Partimage is pretty good for this sort of thing. It also supports network transfers.

Check out Kickstart:

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/...ickstart2.html

Just don't try and use kickstart with RHEL AS 3 Update 2 - there is apparantly a known bug that causes any kickstart script with a firewall line to fail.

So you have to _not_ install the firewall setup you want, and also in %post do
chkconfig iptables off
otherwise you won't be able to ssh into the machine once it's installed.

Once it's installed you then have to do a manual firewall setup. There will apparantly be a fix in update 3.

This is what you pay a grand for support for

One of the biggest problems you'll run into with traditional Unix shops is that kickstart requires some kind of network service to install from, like NFS or FTP. Things like Jumpstart (Sun) don't need this as the file deployment is built into the tool. I'm seeing some resistance on this topic.

Thanks for the insight.

I'm installing rh 3 ES on 42 IBM blade servers. Any issue with 3 ES? I would image any issue with AS would be in ES. Where did you find this bug info for 3 AS? I didn't see it on Bugzilla.

The firewall will be handled by Corporate networking so I'm not to worried about this issue. Thanks for the heads up though. Save me some time in reconfig.

I tend to run IPTables scripts on all servers on my network, to provide a multi-layered security model. We were doing this on AS3 Update 1, and it worked fine. When we moved to AS3 Update 2, it all broke horribly. I opened a support ticket with Red Hat through our AS support, and they replied that this is a known issue that will be fixed in Update 3

Having said this, it may only apply to AS... I'm not sure if AS and ES share an installer or if there are differences.

Regards,