See below for embedded comments... Thomas Mack wrote: [snip]

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I only want to:

* install some custom developed RPMs on their system regardless of their choice of profile or individual package selection. (I have added these packages to the installation according Anas' instructions).

* preset the timezone

* install a custom ntp.conf

* add entries to their /etc/fstab for some nfs entries

That's basicaly it. Because of the diverse needs of the installers and

Interesting - why then you do not put SuSE on some NFS-Server, leave the installation to the user and give them a small script to append some entries to /etc/fstab, copy the ntp.conf, set the timezone, start some rpm statements and reboot the machine?

Autoyast seems to be massive overkill to do this...?

There are many reasons for this: 1) we need to control the environment that our testers and developers are working on. Already, we have had people installing what ever version of Linux they had lying around. This is very problamatic. 2) reduce cost and time. It is cheaper and faster for 700+ developers and testers to download 4 installations diskettes or a CD image made only for a network install than to download all the ISO images and burn them. 3) Allows easy update of the custom build software we are having installed 4) opens the door for future modification and additions to the install process (modifying or adding to the autoinstall).

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the various machines they will be installing, it is only feasible to have one control file and let then to most of the configuration themsleves as opposed to writting a custom control file for each type of hardware with different harddrives and videocards, etc.

You will need different sections for different monitors, but not for different videocards, as they will be configured automatically depending on the monitor and the requested screen resolution etc.. On harddisks, you can say something like "auto" for some partially automatic partitioning, or you can say "max" to use the still available space etc. - so there is some flexibility possible. Indeed, we have some working XF86Config files for different machines, and we just copy them at the end of installation to /etc/X11, so we don't even bother too much about automatic X11 installation.

Well, what I am saying is "can the user do all the video and such configuration themselves and leave all issues of hardware out of the autoyast2 process?". We have such a diversity of machines that it is impractical to even consider doing a custom configuration for different types of machines. The user needs to be able to partition drives, set up video, make other selections of software beyond the minimum that I'll setup, etc. In comparison, we are also developing for another Linux platform (who shall remain nameless but who's initials are RH 8^(). They provide a very easily configured network install which does all the above. The configuration of the install system is not hardware dependant (although it could be) and allows the user to take control of many aspects of the install if needed yet provides a way for us to do several customizations to the machines. Apart from the specific needs listed above, we also need to provide a similar experience for the users and testers so that they don't need to know two processes to set up their machines. Basicaly, I don't want total control, I want to be able to set defaults and add the above mentioned configuration changes and additions. -- Marc Christensen http://www.mecworks.com