Pointextder
Programmer
Hello and thanks for clicking on my question!
Here is my situation: I work for a company which sells systems with our hardware and applications on it. We will be outsourcing the build of the machine to another company, they'll handle putting it together, installing the software, and shipping it to customers. My question regards the software side. I need to put together an installation procedure for that company to use. Currently the install involves installing linux (fedora distribution), installing some rpm packages/updates, and installing our own application. I could give them a Linux installation CD and a CD with rpms and our app together with a few sheets of paper of instructions but that would be too long and tedious for them, plus it would increase the chances of something going wrong.
Right now, I'm considering creating a system restore CD. The company would just pop this CD into a newly built system, and the bootable restore CD would handle everything (formatting blank hard drives, installing OS, etc). Is that doable? The benefits are it's easy and requires no human interaction. This same CD could also be given to customers if the system gets corrupted. Some possible downsides I can think of are the same CD would be used for every system they build, I'm not sure if that's okay due to hardware differences (ex. MAC address). Also, if we update our application (which we will be doing on a monthly basis), we'll need to send out a new CD. So it's possible they could install the wrong CD.
Another alternative I am considering is an installation over the web, where we create an installation server and the whole install occurs over the web. Is this even possible? For instance, I'm not sure how you could make a newly built computer access the server over the web. The benefit to this is we would have complete control over what's installed as the software being installed in on-site. The downside would be speed, our upload speed is capped at 384k. This may not be feasible if they have to build multiple machines.
What other options do I have and what would you recommend? If I were to go the system restore CD route, where would I start? Is this something I could put together myself or would I need to contract a company who specializes in that to do it?
Thanks for any help!
Here is my situation: I work for a company which sells systems with our hardware and applications on it. We will be outsourcing the build of the machine to another company, they'll handle putting it together, installing the software, and shipping it to customers. My question regards the software side. I need to put together an installation procedure for that company to use. Currently the install involves installing linux (fedora distribution), installing some rpm packages/updates, and installing our own application. I could give them a Linux installation CD and a CD with rpms and our app together with a few sheets of paper of instructions but that would be too long and tedious for them, plus it would increase the chances of something going wrong.
Right now, I'm considering creating a system restore CD. The company would just pop this CD into a newly built system, and the bootable restore CD would handle everything (formatting blank hard drives, installing OS, etc). Is that doable? The benefits are it's easy and requires no human interaction. This same CD could also be given to customers if the system gets corrupted. Some possible downsides I can think of are the same CD would be used for every system they build, I'm not sure if that's okay due to hardware differences (ex. MAC address). Also, if we update our application (which we will be doing on a monthly basis), we'll need to send out a new CD. So it's possible they could install the wrong CD.
Another alternative I am considering is an installation over the web, where we create an installation server and the whole install occurs over the web. Is this even possible? For instance, I'm not sure how you could make a newly built computer access the server over the web. The benefit to this is we would have complete control over what's installed as the software being installed in on-site. The downside would be speed, our upload speed is capped at 384k. This may not be feasible if they have to build multiple machines.
What other options do I have and what would you recommend? If I were to go the system restore CD route, where would I start? Is this something I could put together myself or would I need to contract a company who specializes in that to do it?
Thanks for any help!
