From: Mail@JoesLife.org   
      
   On Wed, 27 Mar 2024 21:12:11 GMT, Sylvain Robitaille wrote:   
      
   > On 2024-03-26, Joseph Rosevear wrote:   
   >   
   >> I like that Grub has a command line.  It's like a mini OS, and can do   
   >> some useful things.  And it works well for me.  I've used it so long   
   >> that I can't say what, if anything, makes it better.   
   >   
   > No doubt that it's found to be preferable by some, or it wouldn't have   
   > made its way into so many (every known?) Linux distributions.  I *am*   
   > glad to see that lilo remains an option in Slackware-land, though.   
   >   
   >> Hey, I read a little about cobbler and cfengine online.  Both sound   
   >> like deluxe tools.  This can be really good!  Of course, the devil is   
   >> in the details.   
   >   
   > They're great tools, and cfengine can certainly be OS agnostic.  I'm not   
   > even sure that it was originally designed for Linux, specifically.   
   > Cobbler, though, is designed around specific package-installation   
   > routines. (anaconda, in particular, if memory serves)   
   >   
   >> I would say I pulled a rabbit out of my hat.   
   >   
   > scruffy little bunny, it sounds like!  ;-)   
      
   Scruffy and ornery!   
   >   
   >>> The PXE-boot to NFS installation is really a very handy way to do the   
   >>> installations. ...   
   >>   
   >> I considered doing something fancy like that, but I didn't know how.   
   >> And I needed to produce results fast so that I would be allowed to   
   >> continue.   
   >   
   > Been there.  The approach will save you time in the long run, but it   
   > *takes* time to learn how to do it and then to get it set up.   
   >   
   >> Hmmm.  I wonder?  I had radically, modified Slackware, and had very   
   >> little room to spare on each machine's SSD.   
   >   
   > Create a Slackware "package" that implements your modifications, and   
   > then it's just "installpkg localmods-1.0" to get a number of systems set   
   > up?   
      
   Definitely sounds tempting.  What I did *was* an odd departure from the   
   norm.   
      
   My method uses a combination of patches, script-based changes, and   
   rsync.  rsync was useful because I implement a generic user, student,   
   which is fully setup, including the browser cache.  One of the mods is a   
   change to the system which causes a re-creation the student directory   
   each boot.  This makes the system immune to user changes and prevents the   
   browser cache from getting large.   
      
   So I could maybe have put all that into a Slackware "package", but why   
   bother?  I had to use rsync, anyway.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)