FAI Examples tree WAS: compaq array controllers

[Geert Stappers]

At 1:47 +0100 12/11/01, Marc Martinez wrote:
>On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 06:38:44PM -0800, Marc Martinez wrote:
>> this looks like it'll get me going so I can focus on the rest of the
>> setup necessary, but it'll be tomorrow before I have physical access
>> to the machines again.
>
>just to followup (meant to do this last week) with a final report, the
>changes I last posted about do indeed allow me to do "proper" installs
>on our boxes, the only other snag I ran into was with the "sysinfo"
>target not remounting /tmp/target properly.  this was fixed by adding
>an extra line in the umount_local_disks() function:
>
>test -d $FAI_ROOT/ida && rmdir $FAI_ROOT/ida/*
>
>just before the regular 'rmdir $FAI_ROOT/*' command.
>
>I've still seen no comments about the patch I posted or the methods
>I'm using to go about this.  I'm particularly interested in making
>sure that the changes I made don't break any "regular" systems, though
>I tried to make sure they wouldn't and don't foresee any problems in
>that area, it'll be awhile before I have an extra "regular" system to
>be able to test it with myself.
>
>in any case, everything is running wonderfully on my test setup right
>now.  after some more tweaking of the classes for our site and some
>extra fine-tuning we'll be ready to roll this out for our
>testing/staging environments..
>
>thanks for the great infrastructure to build this from, and please
>contact me about any changes necessary to get my patches integrated
>with the main package, I'd really prefer not to maintain them
>seperately for just our site when it seems others could benefit from
>them.
>

You can see FAI as a computer language.
The FAIROOT is then the interpreter and FAICONF the develloped script.

Your request to include your "script" in the main package is like
asking the Python/Perl/Bash/AWK maintainers
to include your Python/Perl/Bash/AWK script in the main package.

I'm not sure if Thomas Lange it really sees it like that,
but I _feel_ he handles it that way.

When I, Geert, met Thomas in real life, we didn't discuss this indept.
IIRC Thomas said something like
 "make-fai-root only warns when FAICONF is empty
  and gives a hint to FAI Examples directory"
 "The sysadmin should plan his installation and build his own Fai config"

Personal Note:
  Thomas Lange is now in California enjoying his vacation
  after two weeks visiting various conferences aboard.
  Knowing this, I feel some what miserable that
  I start a discussion about the example tree in the main package



Marc Martinez his request to put the array controller code in the FAI
main package is IMHO a good request. Also the other code snippets that
where post on this ML should find a good home.

Here is my proposal:

Take the FAI example tree out of the main package and put it
in a separate package called "fai-conf-examples" or just "fai-conf".

This will be an all archs package.

At toplevel it has al least two directories "system" and "function".

In the "system" directory you find directories like "atoms", "anthill",
"pittermaennche", "bigfoot" and "barebone". Under these directories you
find the
dirs "class", "disk_config", "files", "hooks", "package_config" and "scripts"
They contain only the information for the system "system-name". System
"bare-bone"  is the absolute minimum.

In the "function" directory you find directories like
"compaq-array-controller",
"exim", "adduser", "cs_koeln", "s3virge" and other functions which are
generic for a system. See also the post of Chad Waldstorm about packages
that need
mkdivert action. The directory has the same structure as system/"system-name".

People can copy a function to sytem/"system-name".


  cd fai-conf

  cd system
  mkdir my_system
  cp -r barebone/* my_system
  cd my_system
  mv class/barebone class/my_system  # rename of the hostname
  cp -r ../../function/compaq-array-controller/* .
  cp -r ../../function/adduser/* .
  echo compaq-array-controller >> class/my_system
  echo adduser >> class/my_system

  cd ..
  mkdir othersys
  cp -r barebone/* othersys
  cd othersys
  mv class/barebone class/othersys  # rename of the hostname
  cp -r ../../function/exim/* .
  echo exim >> class/othersys

This is will make a cleaner configuration definition of the systems.
( I still have cruft of the original example in my config tree )


What I like the see, is a place with nice fai config examples.



Geert