How to create a deployment image of altered CentOS?

Question

So, I managed to install CentOS 6.5 on a client PC, and then, continued by tweaking a lot of its stuff (such as adding samba and kerberos stuff, joining the CentOS PC with Active Directory, removing ABRT GUI, altering some config files, installing VirtualBox and creating a virtualized Windows 7 machine to boot, etc.)

Now, I'd like to pick up the client PC with the altered OS and make a deployable installation out of it (ideally by getting to the point of transferring the image onto a network deployment server, such as WDS, and allowing other PCs to do a network install based on such an image).

Note this: the other "to-be-deployed" PCs are expected to be of the same hardware configuration as the test machine. Well, at least that's something.

Would you be a sweetheart and advice me on creating a deployable image of CentOS while also keeping all the man-made OS alterations of mine? Thanks!

Answer 1

There are tools to make your own distros but I think it's the wrong way to go. You'll run into problems when you have hardware changes, when cent-os updates and so on.

The correct way to do this is IMO to use a configuration management tool (for example puppet)

• Install a barebones centOS
• Install puppet
• Use puppet to configure the computer just as you want it (puppet can do anything you can do, add packages, remove packages, configure users anything really)

Advantages are that you only have to do the tweaking once and if you want to change anything you can push out the changes to all or any computer you manage with puppet.

The only thing puppet requires is a puppet master that holds all your computers configurations.

Answer 2

Use the distribution's tools, in this case kickstart. It allows you to define the packages to install and post-installation configuration. Given the kickstart file, you can then replicate the installation at will, even port it forward easily to new versions of the distribution.