A Linux Distribution for CSUN?

1
A Linux Distribution for CSUN?

• Stephen Walton
• TSAG
• December 9, 2004

2
Problems to Solve

• Duplicated efforts
• Downloads
• Installation
• Better integration with campus
• LDAP authentication/authorization
• PORTAL, WebCT interoperability
• Central backups?
• Fewer faculty moonlighting as sysadmins
• We do it, but it isn't really our area of
  expertise

3
Approaches

• Complete CSUN Distro
• Which one?
• Larger effort
• Provide kickstart file or equivalent for
  auto-install and setup
• Post-install script

4
CSUN Distro

• Which one to base it on?
• Most physical scientists in my experience using
  RedHat or a variant
• Scientific Linux (Fermilab) is a repackaging of
  RHEL
• Boston University's campus distro is Fedora-based
• Stability (RHEL) vs. up-to-date apps (Fedora)
• Large-ish effort

5
CSUN Kickstart

• Kickstart is a mechanism for automating
  installation of RedHat
• Can customize packages, disk layout, and so on
• Somewhat inflexible perhaps only feasible for a
  completely hands-off install on standard hardware

6
Post-install script

• Flexible, easy to implement
• Harder to deal with quirks of individual
  installations
• lynx -dump http//www.csun.edu/fedora/prepare.sh
  sh

7
Who's Gonna Do It?

• I will collect names and organize a startup
  meeting in January
• Meanwhile, think about the answers to these
  questions