How can I install linux on multiple computers with the same settings?

Question

I have 7 computers that I would like to install linux on (CentOS to be specific). The computers are all slightly different in terms of hardware, some are Intel, others are AMD. I have to install a lot of packages. I would like to be able to just do all the installation work on one computer, and then clone that system to all the others and just change hostnames. Is this possible?

Answer 1

maybe is the simple answer,



partimage is the program to look at



http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page



i use it via knoppix live cd as you cannot image a mounted drive - so its a waste of time installing partimage on the first centos and trying to image it



you may need to install centos on an intel and an amd and image both,

only takes a few mins to image though

Answer 2

VMware is a properly selection whether a honest much less perplexing attitude is to hire the linux stay cd. The stay cd won't make any transformations on your technique and you will succeed to hire linux. the undertaking is that it does run extra slowly than if it have been attached (even inspite of the undeniable fact that walking in vmware may additionally slow it down), and any transformations which you're making is in all probability no longer eternal. in case you prefer to proceed the transformations you're making in linux a stay usb variation with staying power is your respond. you are able to run linux by ability of way of booting from the usb flash stress (if your pc can boot from the usb stress) and it will run slowly additionally whether any transformations you're making will stay for jointly as you reboot. See the 2nd link. The staying power characteristic is on hand in a large number of whether now no longer each variation of linux. Ubuntu and linux mint are 2 that do. you will additionally should income the linux documentation on the internet internet site of the linux distro which you only prefer to extremely be experienced linux.

Answer 3

There is another one you can try called Clonezilla: http://www.clonezilla.org/



Some of the testimonials are interesting:



Wes Kennedy

Location: Tampa Bay area, FL, USA.



Now we can image any PC within our 25 subnets at 20 different offices without traveling to their location.



"I work for a large Health Care company who has around 1700 desktops in our HomeCare division and more than 500 laptops for our nurses. The nurses often manage to mess up the laptops by using them for much more than work so we often have to re-image them. We recently had to image 173 HP Mini’s to distribute to our nurses. Our old procedure would have taken us about 2 months of constant work to get them prepared, so I decided to go out and find a better solution. I built a CloneZilla server based on Fedora 10 and I alone imaged the 173 laptops in 3 days. The only reason it wasn’t any faster was because I didn’t have the physical space to set up more laptops at once for the multicast image. The bonus of having the CloneZilla server is now we can image any PC within our 25 subnets at 20 different offices without traveling to their location. Clonezilla allows us to image from a Samba share!" -- Wes Kennedy, FL, USA. 04 Mar, 2010.

Answer 4

You could load CentOS into remaster, its the online site that many distro's use to create their distro. (it's what linux mint and other forks normally use).



You upload CentOS to it, then you can modify it however you like. (it should be free to a certain point, but it's incredible cheap...)