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williambishop
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Windows network admin appliance?

Since all of the components I've accumulated are now a single monolithic linux server, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in it.

This is what it does:

I build a gold image in vmware server, of XP sp2. I sysprep it with my custom inf files(you'd need to get a drivers folder, as it's a gig by itself). I resize the partition to the lowest value I can. I use G4U to upload it to the vsftp component of my server. I use MIDS(a frontend for G4U) to download the image to the end stations.

WPKG is used to manage hosts, upgrading software, patches, etc.

A web server(pmwiki on apache) hosts packages that I built with one of the free packaging installations. It also is the front end where I can simply put in a password, then click the package I want to install. It also holds registry files, package clusters, etc. Adding new links is easy using pmwiki, where I can edit it from anywhere, even sitting at a end station repairing a pc. Additionally, pmwiki hosts the updates page, where techs are informed of changes, scheduling, call lists, etc.

I use it to maintain a VERY fast build cycle, wherein I can test a build, update it and have it sitting on a server for deployment in a matter of hours. It then is deployed in a matter of minutes(MIDS is the best thing ever! It's so good I named the system MIDS in honor). I can keep the stations upgraded, patched and tweaked using WPKG(windows packager). It is a beginning to end management system, and all of it is opensourced.

used:

G4U,mids,wpkg,fedora core,vsftpd,samba,apache, pmwiki

It's really a conglomeration of a lot of other folks hard work, with a little tweaking on my part.

It is very fast, very flexible, and has cut floor time from days to minutes. I can have a fully built image, including all applications off the server and onto the floor in under 5 minutes, join the domain and ready to work on.

Included in a temp folder would be iso's for g4u,mids,etc. plus documentation on the process.

Anyone think this might make a decent appliance? It's probably large, but it could be pared down. I didn't see where there would be a minimum...but I sure wish this had existed when I started trying to figure out how to do all these things.

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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williambishop
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The first group of people have apparently gotten it and are satisfied with it, though they would like more documentation.

We're designing the next phase, and it looks like the whole edition will fit on a single CD. We're also putting selinux back in, as well as turning on the firewall. The first version is intentionally insecure, as it was just getting everything to work together.

When you download it via bittorrent, please keep it seeding for a bit, those first people suffered what I'm sure was a couple DAYS of tedious waiting. There are 8 or so people seeding, but we know that at least 20 have downloaded it. If you keep it seeding, it makes it faster for the rest, and plus Rick can have his phone back since we're stealing his bandwidth.

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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williambishop
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We've gotten a lot of feedback(snail mail 21 packs, torrent 11(at 3 gigs), and by ftp 2 users).....There are at least 9k seats that I know of on this system at this moment. There are several large environments also using parts of it, but not the whole system. Anyway, these are the changes being included in the next release:

webmin is installed by default, the virtual machine comes up and tells you the address to connect to for configuration. We had originally included a kde desktop for people who were basically "green". The people who have downloaded it have made it clear it is unnecessary, and since this is not for a challenge anyway, I agree.

An asset management database is included, you can either install mysql on the guest, or my advice, get the awesome mysql appliance from here:

http://virtualappliances.net/downloads/

we've moved the base to centos 4.3 with no gui, saving 60 percent on size minimum. We'll be doing a massive change in size in the next major release. If virtual appliances posts their dhcp server, we'll also ask about including it, or at least pointing users in the right direction. Given the option and the time, we may follow suit and do a custom gentoo build to be the guest, which would probably put our appliance in the sub 100 MB range.

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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