Sources of Installable Software

Sources of Installable Software

The location of a software distribution is known as the distribution source; the system receiving software during an installation is known as the target. A distribution source may be a CD that is mounted on the target, a CD that is mounted on a remote system, or a centralized directory on the network to which the distribution has been copied (see Figure 1-2). The directory on a distribution CD that contains the software is always called /dist.

A server or personal workstation that supplies a distribution source to remote targets is known as an installation server. An installation server can provide the distribution source from a local CD-ROM drive or from a disk directory that contains the installable images. A directory of installable software is known as a distribution directory. A distribution directory may contain software from several distributions.

Figure 1-2 illustrates local and remote distribution sources.

Figure 1-2 : Software Distribution Sources