FAI for Woody

[Thomas Lange]

Here are some usefull information Matthew Palmer
<mjp16 at ieee.uow.edu.au> sent to me and some of my replies.

> On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Thomas Lange wrote:
> 
> >     > I've been having a poke around FAI, and I've got to say that, if
> >     > it worked, it'd be the best thing since (and a close runner-up
> >     > to) the kernel.
> > Thanks for the compliments.
> 
> You're up for even more profuse compliments - through a bit of fiddling, I
> made it work, and it exceeds even my expectations.  I now have my classes
> set up, and machines installing merrily all over the place.  This package's
> flexibility, utility and general goodness is a credit to you.
Thanks

> 
> >     > of FAI in the works, or if you could give me some idea of why it
> >     > doesn't work here.
> > Have you tested it ? Currently I have no woody machine available, but
> > I will start in a few weeks. If you can try to install it on woody and
> > test it, I would be very happy.
> 
> What I was trying to do was install the NFS root using Woody packages -
> base2_3.tgz, and Woody extra packages.  For reasons I never figured out
> (although Perl problems weigh heavily) I never managed to complete that
> stage.  I gave it up for a few weeks to pursue other things.
base2_3.tgz will not be available, since woody is using
debootstrap. Currently FAI is adapt to run under woody.

> 
> I then tried again, using base2_2.tgz and potato packages.  Voila!  It
> works.  I make the sources.list on the NFS root point at my local Woody
> mirror after installing the base system, and then go off and make the
> machine install itself.
> 
> What happens is, the 2.2 base system gets put on, all's well.  Then apt-get
> update gets a Woody package list, and then apt-get <whatever> pulls in Woody
> packages from everywhere.  Nothing breaks, all goes well, and I'm happy as
> can possibly be.
Nice solution until FAI for woody is ready.

> I created my own 2.4.3 boot floppies, which work well for BOOTP to a DHCP
> server.  I run DHCP for the Windows laptops I need to support, and I didn't
> want to have another separate service running.  It works well enough.
> 
> Defining classes took some time, and as I don't know Perl all that well I
> didn't delve into the mysteries of the Perl module you wrote for FAI.  What
> I would appreciate the most at this juncture is documentation for all the
> shell subroutines and Perl functions available to the script config system.
> 
Which scripts do you mean ? Those in class/ or scripts/ ?  All
subroutines defined in /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/usr/share/fai/subroutines
are available in those scripts.


> All I can say is, you're a genius.  The system works a treat, and I owe you
> several <beverages of choice>.
Thanks a lot.

-- 
 Thomas