:ii (Instant Infrastructure) and Sputnik

I've recently spent time a good amount of time working on :ii (Instant Infrastructure) and thought I'd catch folks up a bit on my work.

:ii (Instant Infrastructure) is my attempt at providing a single usb that could create the infrastructure for a community library, medical clinic, or school and optionally having them centrally managed.

:ii started out as a cookbook with network pxe-boot based replication-of-os-installation-image happening over the network, but I have forked dell-recovery ( the software that Dell uses to create the os-recovery partition) to migrate the os-replication to use usb.

The recovery partition will allow end users to 'factory restore' the entire disk without using external media or network. Combined with the Ubuntu OOBE (Out Of Box Experience) selection of roles below, we can have re-usable, retaskable laptops that require very minimal IT infrastructure. Any of these machines with the recovery partition could create new :ii usb sticks

Just before ChefConf2012 I came across an initiative from Dell that overlapped a bit with :ii. Sputnik is a project to create a profile tool that would enable sharing of software selections (ppas and package lists) via a git repo. Similar to :ii but focusing only on ppa/package profiles. They hope to be able to ship the Dell XPS13 with an option to ship a Ubuntu image with this tool.

I did a demo for Dell on a loaned XPS13 that used a oem-usb install that I customized for use with hosted-chef and uploaded my sputnik-cookbook.

I think this tool could be very interesting to folks deploying chef-managed laptops anywhere.

During the Out Of Box Experience, as soon as the user account was created, I launch chef-client to register the new computer with the chef-server and present the node editor to the user upon first login.

I would like to upgrade this approach by integrating a Ubiquity Plugin, so that selection of roles, and available chef-servers could occur during OOBE.

It should be possibly to also use  local chef-solo repo checkout on the usb-stick.

However my work a Sputnik is a bit on-hold until Dell moves things forward a bit, so I'm primarily focusing on the ways it overlaps with :ii.

I'm looking for companies that might be interested in funding further works on either of these projects (I'm not employed by Dell or on the approved vendor list, but maybe your company is). Taking me on as a part or full time employee to work on your infrastructure would be a great idea. 8)

Please reach out to me at chris@hippiehacker.org.