Autoinstall, for each platform, is comprised mainly of: A vendor-specific portion: This portion will allow the machine to be booted in a particular way (ideally diskless, but procedures initiated with a boot from CDROM are also available), followed by a loading of the base OS, as provided by the vendor. This portion is repeated only by doing another full reinstall. Changes made to a machine's configuration, that were not recorded in "after", will be lost, when using this portion. This portion completes, by chaining into the portion described below. A vendor-independent portion (also known as "after" or "generic-after"): This portion configures machines for use at UCI, within specific departments, and even for sitting on the desk of a specific individual. This portion is invoked either by a complete install (see above), or by running run-after. This portion is written to be highly repeatable (idempotent). Hence, as improvements are made to "after", those portions that were already available when "after" was last run are simply repeated, while the additions to the script make their changes to a machine's configuration. Changes made to a machine's configuration, that were not recorded in "after", are typically not lost, when using this portion. The only time they are lost, is when someone has manually changed something, that "after" changes automatically. This vendor-independent portion is comprised of (see also Tailoring After): "after" (a top-level script) the small scripts in "each" that "after" calls a handful of auxiliary scripts, to facilitate the job of scripts in each http://www.nacs.uci.edu/support/dcs/automation/components.html