future of fai

[Thomas Lange]

Hi all,

>>>>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 23:21:20 +0200, Geert Stappers <Geert.Stappers at xs4all.nl> said:
    > Let us know when the bazaar is open again.

The bazaar is open again! I'm back to hacking mode. First I have to
read and work on a lot of fai mails that are in my queue. But cvs is
changing now. So, please do not worry about the project. It is not
dead! Just be a bit more patient.

First of all I will implement some patches that you all sent to me.
I like to thank Era Eriksson, who send me a big patch that fixes a lot
of misspellings and other typos.


Enhancements are only included to fai when also the documentation is
updated, and if it's not a dirty hack. I do not have the time to
cleanup every quick and dirty hack you send to me and also write the
documentation or update the manual for this new feature. Please try to
write code, that will hopefully also work in other environments and
not only yours. Then I can include your code directly into fai. This
will help me saving time and doing more things on fai.

I'm also a bit conservative when changing things. A patch that
includes a very new feature may work for you, but can break the
installation for others. Keep that in mind when writing software or
complaining about the slow progress fai makes. FAI should be reliable
and well tested.

I got many patches for setup_harddisks. Too many ;-) You know, it's
very ugly code, so I do not want to spend much time for this
tool. Since a long time, I like to rewrite this tool. But it works for
most people. So, other things get a higher priority than improoving
this tool. Therefore, I will only apply patches, that fixes bugs or
are simple to review and are useful for a lot of people. Have you
added also a patch for the documentation of setup_hostddisks? That
makes my live easier.

I also think it's very difficult to merge all patches for
setup_harddisks, that I received. So, some enhancements that are only
requested by a limited number of users (almost exactly one) will not
be applied. If I'm wrong, please tell me. Are uuid and labeled mount
really so important ?

If you want to help me, these are the topics where you can help me:

- proofreading of the manual
- testing, testing, testing
- sending patches for bugs. Send theses patches to
  fai at informatik... or via the Debian bug tracking system at http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
- patches including enhancements for fai will have lower priority
- should we switch the installkernel to devfs ? What parts are
  affected ? Can both be used at the same time ?
- testing of dhcp3, create and test an example. Can the dhcp3 daemon
  reload its configuration without restarting ?
- write a script that creates a bootable CD. I do not know if it's
  possible to detect the name of the CD-ROM without using a
  initrd. What if the computer has (several) IDE and SCSI CD-ROMs? The
  CD should be made from an existing nfsroot on a fai server. I think
  Niall Young will work on this.
- write a little success story of your experience using fai or answer
  the questionnaire


That's all for today, folks. Let's debug fai, get it improved and
write some new good code for it. I hope this mail cleared up some
things.

regards Thomas