[rescue] My Best Rescue to Date.. Ever

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Francois Dion <francois.dion at gmail.com>
" 
" On 1/17/06, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
" >
" > I hate to see them bloating the OS media.  *ALL* of the UNIX system
" > installs should seperate the base OS install from everything else.
" >
" > Having to select/deselect packages during initial install is a major PITA.
" >
" > A simple base OS with an unpolluted and unbloated install, and
" > everything else seperate like it should be.
" >
" > Like... NetBSD.  Linux distributions, Sun, IBM, etc... they could all
" > learn a lot from those guys.
" 
" On Solaris, setup a jumpstart server with the base SUNW cluster setup
" unattended. I can install machines within minutes with that setup by
" simply doing a "boot net" at the OBP.
[]
" A full install (all + OEM) can be done over lunch. On x86 with working
" PXE (older intel NICs gave me some problems in the past but anything
" more recent works great) is as painless too. I got a machine that is
" head of a cluster I use to do rendering and is also a jumpstart
" server. I can do a brand new install of the latest OS on all 4
" machines by booting them from the network, go to lunch and when I come
" back they are all done ready for me. I then run a script to add my own
" package and I'm up and running. Been doing this for the past 2 years,
" since Solaris 9. 

i went one better, in a y2k contract i had.  i won't bore you with all
the sordid details, but i decided to roll the machines from sunos4
[various versions] to solaris 2.6 by jumpstart.  there was fortunately
an empty seat, so i used that machine to fine-tune my finish script to
install the recommended patch cluster and customize for the company's
and group's env.  when i was done, the machine came up ready to work.

the two u10s, which i reinstalled just to make them uniform, took 15m.
the five ss20s took 40m.  the lone ss2 took 2h, but it was really not
needed.  simultaneously, over lunch on a friday.  the group would have
the pm to check the changeover, and i'd have the weekend to back it
out if necessary, but it went smoothly.

not long after, i heard from my boss that one of the u10s had crashed
mysteriously, and after poking around a bit and finding nothing he
gave up and re-jumped it.  shortly after that i noticed a patch for
2.6 on u5/u10 which sounded just like the problem he'd described.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought