Knoppix

[Brian Kelsay]

So you could have your server pull from the major Debian round-robin mirror list.  Unless this is 
not kosher.  You might also be able to create a repository that had the major stuff and leaves out 
some obscure stuff.  Don't know if you want to do this though.  You could probably get enough disks 
donated for the project to add up to over 100 GB.  Use SCSI and multiple disks or an ATA controller 
with multiple ATA100 or 133 disks and your Server OS on a separate chain.

In your second paragraph, did you mean that the tiny bootable ISO that is created, 
will have a firsttime script that grabs the user selected packages from the net and not from "the 
user's machine"?

How about if the web interface you build, grabs the files from the mirrors and builds on the user's 
machine?  You would have to have mkisofs in Java or other format to be able to run that on their 
machine if they don't have it.  Unless Jigdo will do it.
I'm just throwing out ideas.  I kind of like the alternative idea of the web app building a small 
ISO that has a package list/install script built by the web app,  that when the ISO is ran on the 
target PC will grab the files from the net.  It would then give you your auto install on multiple 
machines.  Building the ISO would not take long and would allow the user time to think about the 
questions that the standard Debian installer gives you.  It would be more flexible, allowing you to 
save your ISO creation session and come back to finish after some research.  You also wouldn't have 
to host a repository.  Look at one of the online floppy firewall builder sites.  I can't remember 
the link now, but I know there were two that let you build the disk img dynamically from the net.

Brian Kelsay

>>> "Brian Densmore" <> 08/13/04 02:14PM >>>
This is an interesting idea. Never used jigdo, so that's not much help to me. 
I didn't realize that a full debian archive is 100GB. I'd thought of building
a server for it. Now, I'm not as sure of what the system requirements would be
for such a beast. But, I'd still be willing to host it and build a box.
Jigdo does look very useful. I think that might be an excellent idea, especially
as users may want to install everything. I'm not sure I'm prepared to spring
for a terabyte server. To hold all the isos. ;')

I had also thought about building a tiny iso on the fly, that has the selected
list of apps and a small debian distro with a simple install routine and a 
"firsttime" script that then downloads from the user's machine and installs 
the rest of the apps.

It's also nice to see jigdo has a version for windows.

Brian