Installing Manjaro on 8 Computers?

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I’m looking to set up a computer cluster running manjaro for scientific work / job distribution.

What is the recommended way to install Manjaro on each machine effectivly? Each has identical hardware. Should I make an ISO of one entire disk and flash that onto the internal hard drives using dd?

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Hello @Sarah :wink:

In my experience, the most effective way is using PXE Boot and boot a custom image for an unattended installation.

This way, it installs all computers in parallel the same way.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Preboot_Execution_Environment

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Do you typically use Pixicore or should I just do it the classic way? :slight_smile:

Not sure how to get an unattended installation though.

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Use what is more comfortable for you. I have done it the classical way on 25 computer in one room. But not Manjaro :smiley:

In general I would recommend to setup a mirror server first and use that one for installation and updating. It will speed it up a lot. @moson Has a nice docker here: GitHub - moson-mo/manjaro-mirror: Docker image for hosting a manjaro mirror server

  1. Create a bash script which will do the unattended install. It is basically the same like here, but it runs automatically in a script: [root tip] Do a manual Manjaro installation and maybe you could get some inspiration from here: GitHub - picodotdev/alis: Arch Linux Install Script (or alis) installs unattended, automated and customized Arch Linux system.
  2. Put the script on a local web server.
  3. Modify profile before building the ISO, set it to autologin and let it download + run the script after login: Build Manjaro ISOs with buildiso - Manjaro
  4. In general you should create a basic iso with just basic stuff on it for booting. (like the architect version)

Maybe there is a tutorial for this, but I have not found any…

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