Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-autoinstall (49 mails)

[Elmar Marschke <elmar.marschke@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I'm trying to create an exact clone of a machine running openSuSE 10.1.
Highest priority is to end up with a pair of machines that have EXACTLY
the SAME SOFTWARE PACKAGES installed. These machines are build exactly
of the same hardware, shipped from the same vendor on the same day, so
there should'nt be a problem (HP Pavilion AMD 64 X2 Dual Core).

1. I did a fresh install on the first machine; and directly after that
(without changing anything on that machine)...
2. i created a xml-profile using "yast2 autoyast", choosed "create
reference profile" (and did NOT choose or change anything else
manually...) and copied this file to a webserver running on a third
machine.
3. I started a network installation on the second machine, telling it to
use that profile (boot option "autoyast=http://my_ip/my_profile.xml";)
and to use the same installation source as was used for the first
machine (that was a SuSE 10.1 DVD lying around on a samba share of a
fourth machine).

I expect this to end up with exactly the same software installed on both
machines (is this right or do i misunderstand something??); and besides
that anything else also be the same (partitioning and so on...).

Unfortunately this is not the case. I checked the output of "rpm -qa" of
both machines with a perl script i wrote and it reported the following
differences:

"This exists in machine2.txt only: libgcj-32bit-4.1.0-25
This exists in machine2.txt only:
java-1_4_2-gcj-compat-32bit-1.4.2.0-33"

I doublechecked this manually; it's true. On the first machine, these
packages are not installed, however packages of the same name but
without the "32bit" in it are installed (but these are ALSO installed on
the second machine).

Question 1: Can someone explain me why this is happening? Is there a
mistake in my approach?

Besides that i got the same problem trying to do the same on some
production servers, which are running since a long time. However in
those cases the difference is even bigger, there are around 80 packages
reported to be installed on just the second machine, which i expected to
be an exact clone (also identical hardware and so on). 

My assumption in this case is that some packages are being installed on
the "clone", because an "addon" section like "KDE" is in the
profile.xml; while some packages of the "kde" selection were separately
removed from the "original" machine after installation (without removing
the whole selection "kde"). Could this be the cause?

Question 2: Does "yast2 autoyast / create reference profile" really
represent the actual status of that machine concerning installed
software and anything else?
Is there a better way to reach my goal (two machines with exactly the
same software installed; exact clone); how can i create a working
xml-profile that ensures this; even if there were lots of software
installations and deinstallations on the original machine after the
first "initial setup"? 

Thanks in advance..

-- 
Dipl.Ing FH Elmar Marschke
Schenker & CO AG 
IT-Innovation SO-Europa / IT-Innovation SE-Europe
1010 Wien / Vienna
Austria 



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