Overview

The purpose of LUI is to provide a simple method of remote, customized, cluster installation. By remote, we mean over a network; today LUI supports installation over ethernet. Customized refers to the ability to define and manage resources that can be applied to installing nodes. Currently supported resources are:

disk partition table
linux kernel
kernel system map
a list of RPMs to install
file systems (local or remote)
user exit script
ramdisk
source (a file to be copied directly from server to client)

LUI also has a set of commands to define a single installation server machine, and a set of clients to be installed. Using the LUI commands, one can define a set of resources, allocate the resources to the installing nodes, and have these resources "applied" to the node during installation.

The real value of LUI is in applying a customized set of resources to a set of installing machines. For example, all the nodes in frame 1 of a cluster might be uniprocessors, and all the nodes in frame 2 may be SMPs. Using LUI, you can define two kernels, one for the UP machines, and one for the SMP machines, and allocate the correct kernel (and map) for each frame of nodes.