Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-autoinstall (49 mails)

[Steve Francis <sfrancis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Elmar Marschke wrote:
> 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?
>   
I can answer this part - I'd bet that the 1st machine is 32bit kernel,
the 2nd 64bit. That's decided by the kernel and initrd supplied by your
bootserver.
> 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..
>
>   

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