[Solved] Simultaneous installation on multiple workstations

[magfan]

I have to install Mageia on four Workstations. What is the most efficient and/or easiest way to do this and to keep all workstations up to date later on? The workstations are in the same network behind a firewall but one of them has direct access to the internet.

[morgano]

Easiest: use classic installer per documentation.

If you wish to really minimise internet usage: use network installer and start with a minimal install on one computer and install Urpmi-proxy on that one. Then configure that computer to itself use Urpmi-proxy, and install what you need. Then on the other computers use netinstaller, tell it to use your urpmi-proxy as repo. After install make sure they are set to use your Urpmi-proxy.

A package retreived by any of your computers will be fetched by Urpmi-proxy and then cached there for others to use quickly and without downloading from internet.

[doktor5000]

You're asking three questions at once.
For one, you could prepare an automated installation (like kickstart for RHEL or AutoYaST for SUSE) although not sure if it makes sense for 4 boxes. Check https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Auto_inst
For two, check https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Urpmi-proxy - but you could also simply host your own mirror, but same as above - not sure if it makes sense for 4 boxes.
Most efficient way would be to use some sort of configuration management on top, we do have ansible or puppet available in our repos.

[magfan]

After all, it was easiest to install each of the four systems individually because there were slight differences in hardware configuration.