Re: Building identical squid servers.

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:26:06 +1100, you wrote:

>
>Hi,
>
>This is a general linux question as much as it is a squid question.
>
>I am thinking of building multiple squid boxes.. between 5-10.
>
>Is there a way in linux to build one box, then ghost the Hard drive to other
>boxes.
>
>Your advice or information is appreciated.
>
>Thanx in advance.
>
>Ben

I have 7 Linux boxes running as proxies currently and will be
commissioning about 20 or 30 more in the next few months. I use the
RedHat KickStart to build the servers, I boot from a kickstart floppy
then install from either a local CDROM or an NFS server. The CD and
NFS gives subtle differences in the install in fact so I'll be just
doing it from CD in future, this is because the boot image is
different.

From putting the floppy until the system boots takes some 7 minutes
which I reckon has got to be way quicker than some of the other
'practices' of block copying disks.

The machine will now run Squid in a basic mode and I put the finishing
touches to the configuration by using an rdist job which distributes
templates for stuff like the squid.conf the runs a shell as a
cmdspecial to perform some stream edits etc to turn the template into
a local file. For example the addition of a new proxy requires at the
least the addition of some ACL to allow it access the parent cache.
The difference between the config files on my caches are so small it's
really easy to perform this via a 10 line script. This makes for easy
upkeep if I need to alter an acl or add some redirector stuff.

As a result we don't really worry about backups too much, it's just
quicker to re-install the system. Since most of the proxies are, or
will be, remote then I cut copies of the kickstart floppy and RedHat
CD and ship them to the office, they find a PC and perform the install
themselves which consists of being asked for a name and IP address and
the keyboard type all else is in the kickstart config.

I toyed with altering the RedHat distribution CD and including some
extra RPM's and some updated ones but I decided that it would go out
of date if I rolled the Squid version or got some security patches
etc. Also by leaving this vanilla I'm expecting that the kickstart
file will work with RedHat 7 giving me a no-brainer upgrade path.

Ian

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