I'm using Slackware to build a kiosk system. Now that I've gotten most of the stuff working correctly, I need to automate the installation so I can use the same install on every box. Does anyone know if Slackware has the option to save a list of the packages I installed so the same install can be replicated?

Also, if that's not possible, I'm thinking of simply putting the CDs in the burner and deleting the files I don't want installed so I can simple tell it to "install everything." Does anyone know, or can anyone guess, how Slackware's installer will respond to such a treatment?

Thanks in advance for the good advice.

Troutwaxer

slacks installer uses tagfiles, located in each install directory, the way i generally do it is take all needed packages, throw them in one directory, (mount the drive i'm installing to) and run
installpkg * root=/path
on that directory it might be rootdir, it's in the installpkg man page, that way you don't need to run the installer, otherwise manipulate the tagfiles and run from custom tagfiles with the slack installer..

see man pkgtool, installpkg

Thanks miaviator278.

At what point in the installation do you do this? I'm trying to automate this, both for myself and others, and don't want to have to make things more complicated. Would it make more sense to simply eliminate the tagfiles along with the packages I don't want?

The idea is to use the minimal number of command line tools so I can tell someone who doesn't know Linux very well and say "just click on "install everything.""

Thanks in advance.

Alex

hmmmm....

ease of use for someone else to do it, ( i thought you would be doing it, and i was thinking just put the hdd in your comp and install everything to it. ) you can use a bootable slack disk, with a directory called packages, then when they boot it, they could execute a script you put on there, say install.sh, after they partition and mount their main drive, in /mnt, you can write the script to installpkg * to that disk, then they reboot, run pkgtool if they need to setup networking, or a default x server, and that should be it, you shouldnt need to install..

you can still use the entire installer if you wish, you would just remove unwanted packages and edit the tagfiles so they could choose use custom tagfiles and then install everything.. i suppose it depends, are you giving prepartiitioned hard drives, are you making bootable cdroms, are they dual installing, ? a lot of circumstances, check out the tagfiles in a slack package directory, and the manpages i mentioned they pretty much explain how to make a custum slack install,

the other option is to install slack how you want to a hard drive, tar or dd the entire install, and just copy that, or have a script copy it from cd..