RFC: How to improve Ubuntu support

[Robert Markula]

>>>>> On Thu, 06 Nov 2014 10:16:30 +0100, Moritz Struebe  
>>>>> <Moritz.Struebe at informatik.uni-erlangen.de> said:
>>     > * Improve the example configuration
>>     > I see two ways of doing this. First make a second example "Ubuntu" or
>>     > just add all the necessary changes in comments. As one should look
>>     > through the configuration anyway this might be the solution that is
>>     > easiest to maintain.
>> We already have a package_config/UBUNTU in FAI. Is this not
>> sufficient? Sure the repository URLs are different for Ubuntu, but
>> this should be done in the FAI package for Ubuntu.

> Yes, your are right. I was thinking this through while reading [4] and
> somehow my brain went down the wrong road - our own config, which I
> inherited, is too far away from that example....

Just to chime in...

I think Moritz' proposal on getting current FAI packages into the  
Ubuntu repositories is a great idea. FAI is a nightmare to configure  
on Ubuntu, there are so many quirks and pitfalls there and the  
documentation required to get it running is spread widely. A working  
out-of-the-box solution would be such an improvement for everyone.

In the Wiki page [4] you mentioned I tried to stick as closely as  
possible to the stock FAI configuration. All changes from the stock  
FAI configuration are documented cleanly with appropriate classes  
wherever possible. This eases transition and future upgrades. In fact,  
I'm using FAI since quite a few years now over multiple upgrades and  
this system has proven to be robust and scalable.

I'd recommend this path for the Ubuntu FAI packages as well in order  
to facilitate upgrades for the maintainer on one hand and make it  
easier for the users to work with this package on the other hand -  
keeping closely in sync with the official documentation, examples on  
the Wiki and the mailing lists. Introducing a whole new configuration  
just for Ubuntu would somewhat 'break' this compatibility.

What else would be great would be a Ubuntu-specific readme in the  
fai-server packages that gives a quick step-by-step-guide on how to  
get everything up and running (take 'fai-setup -vl' as an example).

Cheers,

Robert


[4] http://wiki.fai-project.org/wiki/Installing_Ubuntu_Linux_with_FAI