[rhn-users] Network Installations via RHN Proxy Servers

[inode0]

On 2/11/07, Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com> wrote:
> We've discussed doing this on the mailinglist (and I have had some
> conversations with people that have this on their wishlist).
>
> One of the problems is the differences between distributions, another is
> the fact that mrepo starts from ISO images (and as a result are read-only
> mounted) to save disk space.
>
> What I am interested to look at is using fuse/unionfs to make the
> ISO-images modifiable and as a result rewrite the on-disc metadata to
> accomodate kickstart installations.

While this is interesting for mrepo, my focus now is more on fixing up
the anaconda metadata so installs can proceed from on-disk
installation trees. That would be one step toward what mrepo would
need at least.

So does anyone know of tools for doing this before I start down the
"figure it out yourself" development branch?

> For this mrepo needs an understanding of anaconda's metadata and apply the
> correct methodology, unionfs integration and the metadata re-generation
> functionality.
>
> Usually mrepo development is driven by effort from users. The best way to
> get new features in mrepo is looking into specifics, join discussions and
> providing patches/information.
>
> PS Starting with RHEL5 this is really no longer necessary as RHEL5 allows
> to use normal yum repositories. The fact that Yum is now moving to an
> sqlite metadata format will probably mean that for FC7/RHEL6 will again
> have a different methodology :)

Can you help me understand how this makes it possible? Presumably this
means that I could now be doing up to date installs of FC5 and FC6
rather than what I am doing (dropping the original ISOs into an
installation tree and doing hundreds of package updates after the
install completes).

Thanks,
John