FAI vs PFAI

[Jacob Weismann]

Hi,

  I know that this mailing list is intended for fai questions
and that the question below is more related to pfai than to fai. 
I hope that its okay to post pfai-related questions to the fai list.
If not, please let me know.

  We have been using fai for a while and are quite happy with it.
However, it lacks updating-features that are crucial to us. Thus,
we turned our attention to pfai. Unfortunaly, this shift has 
introduced a severe problem for us. Firstly, the problem only arise in 
connection with NIS. Secondly, we have traced the problem to the adduser 
command which is part of the ssh installation (user sshd). The adduser 
command tries to consult the portmapper, but it fails and eventually it 
times out. We added 'portmap' to the packages variable in make-fai-nfsroot 
and this had the effect that the portmapper was indeed started during 
the installations process.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to talk to 
the portmapper. I have tried to sum up the differences (related to this
particular problem, that is) that we have discoved between fai and pfai
below. We would be most grateful for any comments on these issues. For
a start: Has anyone else tried to install a NIS client using pfai ???

Best regards,

Jacob

Using the fai-server
---------------------
portmap is mentioned in packages in make-fai-nfsroot.

1) the portmapper is indeed started during the install process.

2) During the install-process
'chroot /tmp/target'
'netstat -atn':  shows that the portmapper is indeed listening.
'rpcinfo -p': shows that we can indeed talk to the portmapper

3) Early in the install-process:
'file /sbin/start-stop-daemon'  tells that it is a Bourne shell script.
Later in the install-process:
'file /sbin/start-stop-daemon'  tells that it is an ELF executable.

Using the pfai-server
---------------------
portmap is NOT mentioned in packages in make-fai-nfsroot.

adding portmap to the packages variable in make-fai-nfsroot ensures:

1) the portmapper is indeed started during the install process.

2) During the install-process
'chroot /tmp/target'
'netstat -atn':  shows that the portmapper is indeed listening.
'rpcinfo -p': hangs and further investigations have revealed that
the state between the hosts real IP adr.  and 127.0.0.1:sunrpc is
SYN-SENT.

3) During the entire install-process:
'file /sbin/start-stop-daemon'  tells that it is a Bourne shell script.

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