InstallParty

This page is a draft only
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.

InstallParty

This page should people give an overview to organize their own InstallParty or InstallFestival and is more or less a summary of Linux Installfest HOWTO

Next InstallParties

• IULinuxFest2007 - Indianapolis, USA - April 11, 2007
• FLISOL2007 - April 28, 2007
• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Peru
• Venezuela
• Santiago, Chile
• LinuxTag 2007 - Berlin, Germany - May 31, 2007

Past InstallParties

• InstallParty - Strasbourg, France - November 22, 2006
• FLISOL 2006 South america - March 25, 2006

Organisation

Humans

The need of the helping hands depends on the size of the event.

• Coordinator: contact for all other participants and person in charge
• Host: has the connection to the owner of the location
• Sponsor: represents an organization that provides the location, equipment, network, materials, food, beverages, etc. to the install party
• Receptionist: Greets people as they come in. Can guide them to the restrooms or the nearest computer store. Is the "mother" at the event.
• Supporter: People who are knowledgeable about Linux and are willing to share their knowledge and provide hands-on assistance to users who needs help
• Technician: Sets up and maintains hardware and network services (NFS, DNS, DHCP)

and of course a lot of users...

Location

There are some basic requirements about the location.

• easy access to the location (elevators are importent for handicapped person and carring hardware to the room)
• enough and strong tables (if you want to let people install their desktop systems) with chairs
• internet access for downloading special packages and for testing
• enough AC power

not necessary, but applied

• enough parking places
• access with public transport
• telephone line for testing modems
• access to the circuit breakers

Hardware

There are two ways to do it.

1. Installations from physical media
2. Network installations

Installations with media

If you choose to let the people do their installations from CD-Rs or DVDs, there must be a place to burn the Fedora images to physical media. Or you have enough Fedora media with you for all guests. A point to discuss in front of the event is the bring-in of external cd- or dvd-readers.

Network installations

The server which provide the access to the installation files should have the following services running.

• DNS
• DHCP
• PXE
• mirroring of all architectures (x86, x86_64 and ppc)

Without PXE there is still a need for a boot media to start up the installation process. It's easiser for you when there are multiple methods of accessing the installation files on the server because not everybody knows all protocols. ( an article about the installation of Fedora without media in german).

• NFS
• HTTP
• FTP
• (rcp)

A big poster with all information about the server would be useful too (IP adress of the DHCP server, gateway and installation server, path to the files). You will need some networking equipment like gigabit-switches and cables. If your InstallParty is hosted at an university you can ask the information service team for using their local area network (sometimes it's possible to use servers or mirrors too).

Information for the visitors

The guests have to be informed about that they should take every part of their computer system to the InstallParty. Every part mean: monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, USB and firewire devices, power strip and network cable. Very often the guests will only bring their laptops along because desktop systems are too heavy.

It's possible that some guests want to install Fedora on very old/slow systems in an attempt to make them usable. This is OK, but there are limitations. The minimum system requirements for Fedora Core 6 are:

• recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
• recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
• minimum RAM for text-mode: 128 MiB
• minimum RAM for graphical: 192 MiB
• recommended RAM for graphical: 256 MiB

Source: Architecture Specific Notes

Food and Beverages

Due to the duration of the InstallParty you should consider the availability of food and drinks for the visitors.