Abusing FAI: standalone auto-installation

[Marc SCHAEFER]

Hi,

I was thinking about abusing FAI in the following ways:

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

   - the boot floppy contains a kernel, a initrd and configuration
     information.

   - the CD-ROM contains software required for installation, such as
     base.tar.gz, some additional binaries (in my case I would need things
     to do ext3 and LVM installation), also maybe with some pre-configured
     `classes' (FAI meaning). It also contains Debian binary/all packages.

My applications are: stand-alone workstations, and specialized servers.

The installation would then be done in three phases:

   1. boot from floppy, start of kernel and initrd.
      The kernel is a kernel with enough to be able to boot (IDE and PCI).
      If additional drivers are needed for the installation (SCSI, RAID
      hardware cards, network cards since we will also support SMB mount
      for development), they are supplied in a modules.tgz on the floppy
      and configured in a modules file on the floppy.

   2. mount the CD-ROM, create the partition layout as configured on
      floppy, create the LVM or RAID devices if any, create the
      filesystems of the appropriate type (ext2, ext3), extract
      base.tar.gz (standard Debian), install special FAI scripts (*), 
      configure LILO, execute optional floppy postinstall script. The
      installed kernel is a standard Debian kernel (or possibly a
      more modularized kernel, with LVM/RAID/ext3 support built-in).

   3. reboot. During the boot process automatic hardware detection if
      possible of Ethernet cards, video hardware, mouse, sound hardware
      and even modem. Configuration is done e.g. through `detect' and
      written to /etc/modules, /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and other places as
      appropriate. Also, a few more floppy scripts and specialized
      configuration might be run, new software may be installed (with
      apt-get, from CD and from network/HTTP if configured). Some of
      the installed packages may be customization packages.

(*) an alternative would be to have them in a Debian package installed
    in step 3 by a minimal script on floppy e.g.

The 3rd phase at least will probably require help from FAI automated
installation scripts. I am especially interested by the non-interactive
installation and how to preconfigure. 
 
In addition, I am looking for advices how to not duplicate work and how to
try to integrate into FAI. 

I have already trash-implemented the above (without ext3 and LVM for now) 
and it works for simple cases, but it does not support installing Debian
packages directly (it installs a pre-generated preinstalled/configured
.tar.gz which is then manuall6y adapted by scripts). Installing Debian
packages directly would have many advantages, such as automatic security
updates on reinstallation for example, even if the CD-ROM is obsolete, and
easyness of replacing the CD packages, not to mention FAI integration.

Thank you for any help and pointers !