fai-server: problems making 32bit apt repo with fai-mirror on 64bit machine

[Sebastian Harl]

tags 412889 + patch
severity 412889 wishlist
thanks

Hi,

On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 10:34:36AM -0800, Carl Van Arsdall wrote:
> When trying to create an apt repository with fai-mirror on a 64bit
> systems some statements report errors.
> 
> When trying to make a 32bit mirror on a 64 machine I attempted to use
> the following methods:

Currently, the documentation does not indicate that this should be
possible. I'm thus downgrading the bug to wishlist.

> First I tried only including the I386 class
> #fai-mirror -c I386 /srv/fai/mirror/
> 
> Then I attempted to exclude AMD64
> #fai-mirror -x AMD64 /srv/fai/mirror

Including or excluding classes only affects the list of packages that is
going to be included in the mirror. It does not have any effect on the
architecture being used.

> The third uses linux32 that fakes out queries to commands like uname so
> that they report a 32bit architecture
> 
> #linux32 fai-mirror /srv/fai/mirror

fai-mirror is using apt-get / aptitude to download the packages which
use a build-in default value for the architecture to be used.


Anyway, I've stepped up to add support to specify the architecture(s)
that should be included in the mirror. The attached patch adds support
for the -a command line option to fai-mirror which accepts a
comma-separated list of architectures. That patch is against the current
trunk but should apply to older versions of fai-mirror as well.

Example usage: fai-mirror -B -a amd64,i386,powerpc /srv/fai/mirror

So far, I've only done fairly basic tests, so more testing and feedback
would be much appreciated. Anyway, I think that the patch could be
included in the post-Lenny version of FAI as this should ensure further
testing and it basically includes an optional option only which should
not affect the normal behavior.

There is one issue though which is currently known to possibly cause
problems: If the -B option is _not_ used, fai-mirror reads a list of
additional packages to be included from information included in the
nfsroot. That might include packages though which are not available for
the specified architecture (e.g. I could not build amd64 or i386 mirrors
on powerpc without using -B). This could be solved by generating the
appropriate list of packages on the fly rather than reading it from
$NFSROOT/var/tmp/base-pkgs.lis. This would require rather large code
changes, so I did not implement it so far as I only consider this to be
a very minor issue.

Any feedback and comments are mostly welcome!

Cheers,
Sebastian

-- 
Sebastian "tokkee" Harl +++ GnuPG-ID: 0x8501C7FC +++ http://tokkee.org/

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.         -- Benjamin Franklin

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