Intent:

• we want to make the procedure for re-installing a PLG machine to be as similar to the usual gradpc way as possible, to minimise confusion.
• ... but we don't want it to be the same image, since PLG have some special needs and desires, so we don't necessarily want to saddle them with all the detritus from the usual gradpc install.
• In particular, they like xhier, particularly accounts management.

So I stole basic from them to use as a testbed.

How to make them PXE boot:

• boot, ^S, choose disable local boot and enable PXE booting.
• reboot, go into BIOS, tell it to boot from network card first: "Default Boot: Network" and "Local Boot: Disable" seems to work best.
• reverse this once you're done, otherwise it'll ALWAYS want to boot from the network.

I considered starting with our standard gradpc image, but that would require much work I suspect, and wind up in the unusual situation of no primary disk partitions. So I booted a recent sarge netinst image. And if we're going to go bleeding-edge, let's go all the way: choose a 2.6 kernel. Use "all files in one partition" option. It made a 512MB swap partition for us, which seems reasonable (at hda5) and the rest was / (at hda1). Good, separate /boot partitions seem to cause as much trouble as they solve...

Post-install, use dselect to grab kde-base and assorted kde-bits (artwork, admin) as well as gnome. gdmconfig to my personal tastes :). Rename cscfadm user to cscf-adm. Install ntp and configure to point on-campus (ns1). Don't forget openoffice.org and cups.

Things to keep in mind post-image:

• ssh keys
• passwd/group file entries (these get copied from plg2? but maybe we'll need more groups now)