Setting Up NFS Or FTP Server For Mandrake Installs

[Swiss]

Hi All,

 

I've been playing around with Mandrake for a while now and I've got my head round most things, once we got passed the Windows to Linux issues.

 

I've over come most issues by trial and error and by reading vast amounts of documentation

 

However there are three problems I am stuck on, mainly becase I can't find good documentation on them, or there is so much documentation on it, that I don't know where to begin.

 

I wish to setup a nfs or ftp server on my network to allow my to install Mandrake over my network rather than from the CD's.

 

I have three reasons for this.

 

1) There's only so many time you can change cd's before you start going a bit mad. Lazy I know, but why do it when you don't have to !!!.

 

2) I frequentlly have to re-install. This is mainly because I am still learning and therefor have an uncanny ability to screw everything up to the point that nothing works.

 

3) The most important reason is updated and additional RPM's. Because I bought Mandrake 9.1 and can't yet afford to purchaes the latest version there are alot of updates avalible most of which I now have (Or at least the ones I need). Every time I re-install from cd i spend a considerable amount of time updateing packages. If I can install over my network I beleive I can update the packages at the source and save myself considerable time. If I can't do it this way, could somebody let me know and I'll stop trying.

 

My setup is as follows.

 

I have a couple of Windows machines (I Know, I'm Sorry. When I learn how to make windows games run on a linux platform I'll get rid of them, but not until then).

 

I have two working linux servers provideing DHCP, Samba, Apache, MySQL, FTP, QMail (POP3, SMTP, SSL-IMAP, Send, FetchMail), Routing and Firewall (Kinda, IP Tables are still confussing me).

 

I have two diskless node servers providing DNS and NTP services. And yes I was stunned when I got these working, a big smile and quite a few beers.

 

I also have two machines for learning on. Once I've learnt how something works properly and I've over come install, setup, configuration and security issues I then install it to one of my two servers. A process which has served me well to date.

 

I can boot-up and connect to both nfs and ftp servers but then it starts going wrong. I'm fairly sure that my problem is down to the directory and file structure on the server, because my installations always fail due to not being able to find files.

 

Could somebody either explain to me how to take my asortment if install cds and copy them to my server, correctly, so that installations can find all the files start to finish.

 

OR.

 

Can somebody point me in the right direction for documentation that relates specificlly to this issue using Mandrake 9.1. I have found some documention for Red Hat but not much.

 

 

My other two problems are kernel and install related so I'll post them in the appropriate places.

 

 

Swiss.

Edited August 15, 2004 by Swiss