Abusing FAI: standalone auto-installation

[Niall Young]

On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:

>    - use a boot floppy and an installation CD-ROM instead of netboot
>      and NFS mounts (stand-alone installation without installation server)

Can I suggest that FAI liase with the boot-floppies/CD/installer/debconf
people?

It would be incredibly useful for the Debian installer to support FAI
as one of the core methods, feeding it a pre-filled debconf database.
PXE/nfsroot installs are only one method where FAI could be useful,
being able to trigger an unattended install via cdrom or ftp or whatever
new methods the installer implements down the road would be great and
might reduce a lot of duplication of effort.

Fixed FAI class profiles could replace the old task-* packages in the
install menu, and allowing them to be generated on the fly based on
a menu of sub-tasks or importing a ready-built class profile with debconf
data would re-use a lot of code.

Same goes for creating custom CDs and boot floppies, if hooks were left
for FAI we could fill in the appropriate config pointing to the class
profile and the same class of machine could be replicated using *any*
Debian install method.  If it wasn't filled in, the normal install methods
would be provided for an interactive install.

-- 
Niall Young                                    Chime Communications Pty Ltd
niall at chime.net.au                            Level 6, 263 Adelaide Terrace
Ph: 08 9213 1330 / 0408 192 797               Perth, Western Australia 6000