For the installation: what's faster, NFS or http+squid (same server) ?
I prefer HTTP since its requires less "resources" ( Ports on the network , configurations on the (nfs) server )
Creating the autoyast file: I've prepared a "master node" and installed everything our user needed until everybody was happy. The I used yast to create a autoyast file and added the installation sources and all hardware dependened parts (disk network). This file I take right now for testing.
We are using small xml files to create a final node.xml Example: ( Project TCE) ... Minimum: tce_base.xml.SLES11SP1 Partition: tce_lvm.xml.SLES11SP1 Network: tce_nw-eth.xml.SLES11SP1 ( No NIS,NFS ) User&Group: ... ... These files will be merged to a node.xml like host1000.xml and copied to the target autoyast installation directory ( ../autoinstall/classes/host1000.xml ) BEFORE the installation starts This allows us to test additional requirements ( Like LDAP) without messing around with a whole autoyast xml file. In our current environment we use also for each suse distribution dedicated xml files. ( We have to support SLES 9 SP4 ,SLES 10 SPx SLES 11 SPx OpenSuse 11.x ,12.x ) and about 10 different projects. Thus with this approach we can reuse and easily fix our xml files on/for new suse versions or projects.
Is there a better way ? If your way is sufficient for you - it might be the best way for you.
Is there a way to convert/use all zypper installation sources into the autoyast ? You can add all installation sources into the add_on_product section. See the example
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- $Id: tce_addon.xml.SLES11SP1,v 1.2 2011/08/25 15:55:59 hjehlers Exp $ -->
<!DOCTYPE profile>
<profile xmlns="http://www.suse.com/1.0/yast2ns" xmlns:config="http://www.suse.com/1.0/configns">
<add-on>