New FAI installation

[Michael J. Freeman]

Hello All,

I am new to the list and new to FAI and wanted to say hi, first. 8)

I am setting up a small NOC and IT department with several Linux
machines doing everything. My goal is to have an FAI server I can use to
build out all of my machines, obviously. I am having difficulty
understanding some of the examples and they don't seem very ubiquitous
to me. What I want is 1 FAI server, fai.gnaps.com, that all the clients
get their build stuff from, via bootp and NFS. I will be building
several clients with FAI that use an NFS server for their home
directories and to authenticate against via LDAP a la openldap. So NFS
and openldap run on the same server. In the examples, its similiar,
except that the NFS server is also the FAI server. In my case I want a
seperate FAI server, NFS server, and then to tell all the clients heres
your FAI server you install off of, then when you boot up, heres your
NFS server you automount your home directory from and heres your auth
server.

I think I pretty much know what to do, I've created a custom kernel
package that I want my machines to use, I'll create the /etc/ldap.conf
file that all of the clients will use, and i'll have the nss_ldap
pam_ldap packages installed with modified /etc/nsswitch.conf. How is
this all done? Do I do it with hooks or classes or what? I'm kind of
confused. Also, I do not yet have the LDAP/NFS server built. would it be
wiser to build it first manually or use FAI to do it, once its setup?

Does the fai-setup thing setup the nfs exports on the fai server? I ran
it and I don't think it did. But that was before I decided i'd use the
intel network boot stuff over boot disk's.

Do I need bootp and dhcp? I already have a dhcp server running on my
network, and obviously they'll not play nicely together, so if I have to
have a dhcpcd server, i'll have to create a disconnected or network
(logically) so the dhcp broadcasts don't go out to the rest of the net.
Can I use bootp over dhcp (I have intel ethernet express 100 cards in
all my machines).

Also, the bootptab example is very confusing, it says to change
FAISERVER with the name of your install server. I'm going to have bootp
and the "fai install server" on the same machine.

Also, what is all this stuff:
:ds=134.95.9.136,134.95.100.209,134.95.100.208,134.95.140.208:\
      :ys=rubens:yd=informatik4711.YP:\
      :nt=time.rrz.uni-koeln.de,time2.rrz.uni-koeln.de:

I'm not going to be running NIS like in the examples, what is applicable
here to my installation?

If my questions are annoying or stupid I apologize, half of this email
is me rambling 8)

Anyone have a similiar installation that I could perhaps see some of
your configuration files?

Thanks in advance!

Michael J. Freeman
Software Engineer
Global NAPs



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