Hi all,
I have a question that's very general, as it relates to no specific problem. I’m buying 4 used PCs from my IS department at work. In theory, they should all contain identical hardware. I would like to install a bootstrap Linux distribution, and then install VMware Server. I have several clients running several platforms, and I think this would decrease the overhead of re-installing a different OS every time I have a client with a new OS. So here’s what I want to do.

1. Install a bootstrap Linux installation to run VMware Server
2. Install VMware server
3. Install the VMware web administrator management interface

At this point I would like to create an image of the installed OS with the tools installed above. Is there any way I can create a disk image, and then move it to a bootable ISO I can use to write the image to the other 3 PCs? This was I can simply write the data I installed on the other hard drives without the need to configure the other 3 PC. I’m not too picky about my bootstrap distro, but I’ll probably either use Cent OS or Debian.

Thanks,
Todd

have a read of this to see if network image is the way to go

http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Usage

but I have never used it.

2) alternatively you could have a live cd with sufficient ram such as 1G...run knoppix with the toram option .....start partimage then eject the cd and load a cdr that contains your image file.

3) you do not mention if dvd...is available....but it should be possible to if (2) is not an option to make a bootable dvd based on dynebolic maybe to add files to your iso image b4 burning but I personally think that when you do an upgrade....its too much mucking around so option 1 or 2 is preferred?