Bruce Elrick wrote:

> As other have mentioned, a mksysb on AIX nicely accomplishes this.
> During a mksysb restore, the kernal is booted off tape and temporary RAM
> filesystems are used to hold a working stripped-down OS while the OS
> filesystems are being restored. It then populates the boot logical
> volume and writes the master boot record on the disk.
>
> For a large number of systems, you can set up NIM (Network Installation
> Manager) to essentially restore mksysb's over the network.  NIM also
> allows installation from fileset images.  For Sun, there is Jumpstart,
> which allows you to install the OS from install images like NIM; I don't
> know whether it supports restoration from special system backups like
> NIM does with mksysb's.

  Jumpstart allows you to boot a Sun from the network, and then you can remap
the partitions on the drive, which packages you want installed, and then you can
add your own scripts to re-install you applications.  Having jumpstart means 
never
having to find your boot cdrom again, as you can boot directly into single user 
mode
and access your disks (very handy for quick hacks like editing /etc/shadow... 
:).  If
you install Jumpstart, make sure to disable it (one way or another) after you 
are done

your install in order to prevent users with physical access a fast and cheap 
method
of modifying your box (although, I suppose the phrase 'physical access' implies 
that
you've lost the security battle anyway.... :).

  I do not know of anything comparable to a mksysb for solaris or hpux.  If 
someone
knows of something similar, I would definitely like to know about it.

 HPUX has a similar type of idea for network installs, but I have never used it.


kells