fai next level WAS: apt-get failures -- blah!

[Thomas Lange]

    > I'm thinking about a "next level FAI"

You mean nlfai will not make a first installation but a maintainance
update of a running machine. I've also thinked about that option, but
currently it's easier and faster to reinstall a machine (complete
reinstall with preserving some partitions if desired).

You have to pay attention on all operation which are not "reentrant",
meaning which can't be executed more than once without corrupting
configuration files. For example if you append a line to a
configuration without testing if this line already exists. Another
example: if you write a new lilo.conf but in the meantime you had
changed lilo.conf by hand. So it will be forbidden to make any changes
by hand ! But making all changes in the configuration space on the
install server is good administration habit.

Following command are "reentrant" or save to call them more than once:

- fcopy
- ftar
- cfengine (e.g. AppendIfNoSuchLine)
- calling lilo twice
- chmod
- chown
- ln (will report an error if link already exists)

This list is not complete but I think it's manageble to use FAI as an
daily maintainance tool. Most tasks in FAI should also work when
setting FAI_ROOT to /, so not chroot environment will be used. And
since all default tasks can be redefined using hooks nlfai should be
easy to implement.

But have a closer look at cfengine, which is made for daily
maintainance and making changes to the system. Maybe you only need to
write some more cfegine scripts.

-- 
 Thomas