Added to this slimmed-down distribution were special configuration and monitoring scripts and the software for digitizing the audio signal. To avoid the work of installing our distribution on every machine, the boxes are built from cloned disks. The cloning of disks and assembly of boxes is contracted out. The contractor ships a box to a new site after entering a unique identifier we specified. This identifier serves to configure the machine once it arrives at its destination.
Configuration is done over the wire by automated scripts.
We chose this method for a number of reasons. First, as the boxes are shipped directly from the point of assembly, we have no opportunity to do the work ourselves. Second, security concerns dictated that we not provide elements of the configuration information to third parties. Few clients, if any, would be comfortable running Linux commands on a text console. In addition, leaving this to the customer would increase the potential for typos and other related errors that would likely cost us many hours on the phone, trying to debug the problem.