GigHub

https://github.com/taura/pandemic-installer

What is this?

This is a toolkit to make a massive installation server that copies the entire hard disk of a master PC to many client PCs.

How it basically works?

The master installer boots from a USB stick or DVD, which this tool helps you make, and becomes a master. The master can boot diskless clients connected to the same network as the master, using network boot. The tool helps you make a customized USB stick or DVD from the regular Ubuntu installation live DVD; when you boot the master with the USB stick or DVD and then boot clients from the network, the master is able to SSH these clients. Thus, the master SSH them, send the entire contents of its hard disk to clients.

I'm impatient, how to use it?

Prerequisites:

• The master PC : any PC that becomes a master

• Patient PCs : any number of PCs you want to clone the master's HDD to; Obviously, the patient PCs must have an HDD that is at least as large as the master's. Beyond that there shouldn't be any requirement, but in practice the best bet is to have a master PC and clients of the same model; we have only tested in this configuration.

• A switch connecting them : this network must be private to the master and clients, in the sense that there must be no other DHCP servers running (as the master takes over this role) and there must be no other PCs that might be confused by the DHCP server run by the master

• Work PC : a linux PC on which you convert a regular Ubuntu installer image into the pandemic master DVD or USB stick. it will be your laptop or a desktop.

• a USB stick or an empty DVD to burn the customized live DVD to; A USB stick must be formatted by FAT. This tool does not automatically format it; use disk utility GUI or a mkfs for it.

Requirements on the work PC : it depends on the following tools.

• squashfs-tools
• syslinux

(todo: embedding syslinux tarball makes it more user friendly?)

Step 1:

Make a customized USB stick

This step should be done on your Linux, "Work PC"

• download Ubuntu live installer DVD image (e.g., ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso)

• put it in your current directory and run

  sudo make -f make_pandemic.mk usb

with luck, this will create /tmp/root/custom_live/edit directory that holds an entire content that will be burned either to DVD or USB

(todo: the reason why we need sudo here is it uses mount, umount, and apt-get to the chrooted file system. may be safer to run only them as root?)

• if this succeeds, plug a USB stick in your computer; chances are it is already FAT-formatted (if it is a fresh USB stick just purchased), and automatically mounted once you plug it; then just go ahead. otherwise you must manually format it and mount it. Use GUI tool (disk utility) or CUI (fdisk and mkfs). When you are ready, burn the file system into USB by :

     sudo make -f make_pandecmi.mk burn_usb -n   # check what will happen
     sudo make -f make_pandemic.mk burn_usb      # go!

Since it wipes out the entire drive, I will strongly recommend you to do the first command (-n option) to see what will happen. See the message displayed and make sure the system correctly guesses the device name (e.g., /dev/sdc), parition name (e.g., /dev/sdc1), and the mount point (e.g., /media/my_usb), of the USB stick.

Altenatively, you can make an ISO image which you can then burn to a physical DVD media. This is especially convenient if your master is a virtual machine, for which you can boot from the ISO image without a physical DVD media. For that,

     sudo make -f make_pandemic.mk iso

Step 2:

Boot the master PC with the USB stick (or DVD).

• Plug the USB stick into the master PC
• Plug the master PC to the network switch
• Power on the master PC

If it insists booting from an intrenal HDD or other devices, check its BIOS setting. Many PCs enter boot device selection menu when you press F12 just after power on.

With luck, the master PC boots from USB and displays a CUI boot menu. Press enter and the master PC will soon display an image similar to regular Ubuntu Live CD. It should show a "master" label on the desktop.

Step 3:

Plug any number of patient PCs to the network switch and boot them

Make sure they boot from the network (PXE boot). This could be configured from BIOS setup menu (e.g., by pressing 'F2' key) or one time boot selection menu (e.g., by pressing 'F12' key). They should also display an image similar to regular Ubuntu Live CD, with "patient" label on the desktop.

Step 4:

After successfully booting all patient PCs, go back to the master PC and then:

(a) open terminal (b) $ sudo su - # ./outbreak

the outbreak command will start copying the HDD of the master into all patients.

The process takes time proportional to the size of the HDD. It will take hours for > 100GB HDDs.

Be patient and have a good luck!