Producing a fully reproducable development environment

Heinrich W. Klöpping

Copyright © 2001, 2002 Henk Klöpping. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in Appendix A

Abstract

Audience:  this book is intended for (Unix) system engineers and system administrators with at least 3 years of practical experience with Unix, preferably Linux.

Approach:  We wanted to create a set of documents that could help us and others to build, maintain and recreate a programming environment for programmers. Items described in this book are the installation and configuration of a PXE bootserver, the installation and configuration of a (Kickstart) software repository, how to maintain workstation configurations using PHP, CVS and MySQL.

The latest version of this book can be downloaded at:

http://www.imagineers.nl/experiences/kspxe/

Sources:  Our sources of information were (Open Source) material on the Internet, several books, practical experience of the authors and others and research done by the authors. We try to give credit where due, but are fallible. We apologize.

Caution

While every precaution was made in the preparation of this book, we can assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. When you feel we have not given you proper credit or feel we may have violated your rights or when you have suggestions how we may improve our work please notify us immediately so we can take corrective actions.

Organization of this book:  This book was written using the DocBook V4.2/XML documentation standard.


Table of Contents

1. Producing a fully reproducable development environment
Problem definition
Assumptions
The need for a fully reproducable environment
The toolsets
Kickstart
PXElinux
DHCP
NFS
Overview of the installation process
2. Hands on instructions
Shoplist
Installing the boot- and installserver
Setting up the hardware
Installing the operating system
Configuration of the system
Creating and accessing the KS Tree
Copy packages into the Install Tree
Adding your own packages
Installing tftpd
Installing the bootloader
Installing the bootkernel and related image
Installing pxeboot configuration files
Configure DHCP
Installing a development workstation
Setting up the hardware
Configure the central server
Boot the client