Preparing CentOS/RHEL For Clone

When deploying CentOS/RHEL virtual machines for a clone, you will want to remove host-specific information from the clone source - the commands below streamline this process by cleaning out the SSH host, interface, & history information.

touch /.unconfigured
rm -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
ifdown <interfacename>
sed -i '/^HWADDR=.*$/d' /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interfacename>
ifup <interfacename>
rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
history -c
shutdown -h now

Note: to find your interface name(s), run the ifconfig command; if the system does not have it installed, determine which package includes the command via yum provides ifconfig (in this case, we would install net-tools.)