Suggestions to improve the documentation

[Niklaus Giger]

Hi

A big thanks to everybody who contributed to FAI!

It allowed me to rescue some files which were noch correctly backuped from a 
system with a corrupt (unreadable) / partition.

Many thanks also for the good documentation. There were just a few stumbling 
showstopper which prevented me to have fai installed fast. Here my 
suggestions:

Chapter 1.3: nfsroot: Change
A filesystem located on the install server. It's the complete filesystem for 
the install clients during the installation process. All clients share the 
same nfsroot, which they mount read only.
to
>A (chroot) filesystem located on the install server. It's the complete 
>filesystem for the install clients during the installation process. All 
>clients share the same nfsroot, which they mount read only.

Chapter 2.1 Requirements
Debian mirror: Change 
A local mirror of all Debian packages is recommended if you install several 
computers. All clients share the same nfsroot, which they mount read only. 
to
>A local mirror or a apt-proxy of all Debian packages is recommended if you 
>install several computers. All clients share the same nfsroot, >which they 
mount read only. 
Why? As I already had a apt-proxy I wanted to reuse it and it worked fine. It 
also just contains the needed packages and nothing more so it is space 
efficient.

Chapter 2.1 Requirements
Add a new item
>
Chapter 2.3 Setting up FAI
FAI_SOURCES_LIST: Add the following comment/footnote
>Do not add lines for more than one distribution, as make-fai-nfsroot may 
>fail, as apt (without a specific apt.conf) cannot handle large list (e.g. 
>woody, sarge and sid). 
Why. There is a known problem with apt which manifests like this
Reading Package Lists...
 E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room E: Error occured while processing 
phpgroupware-
netsaint (NewPackage) E: Problem with MergeList 
/var/lib/apt/lists/172.25.1.52:9999
_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-i386_Packages E: The package lists or
 status file could not be parsed or opened.

Later on please change:
The warning messages from dpkg about dependencies problems can be ignored. 
to
>The warning messages from dpkg about dependencies problems can be ignored. 
>If you have problems running fai-setup, they stem usually from 
>make-fai-nfsroot. You may restart it by calling 'make-fai-nfsroot -r' 
>(recover). Adding '-v' gives you a more verbose output which may help you 
>pinpoint the error. If you want to create a log file you may use
>"sudo /usr/sbin/make-fai-nfsroot -r -v | tee make-fai-nfsroot.log"
>It may helpful to enter manually the chroot environment ("sudo chroot 
>/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot").

Chapter 3.2 Booting from network card with a PXE conforming boot ROM
I did not use tftpd-hpa, but used my installed atftpd. The tftp boot path had 
not to be changed -> /boot/fai as the location of the pxelinux.0 is specified 
via DHCP (correct in the example)
Therefore please change:
Some network cards (e.g. Intel EtherExpress PRO 100) have a fixed boot 
configuration, so they can only use the PXE boot protocol. This requires a 
PXE Linux boot loader and a special version of the TFTP daemon, which is 
available in the Debian package tftpd-hpa. First set up the DHCP daemon. A 
sample configuration files can be found in 
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/dhcpd.conf. Then enable the special tftp 
daemon using this line in file /etc/inetd.conf: 

     tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s -r blksize 
>A lot of ethernet cards support booting via ethernet if a special boot eprom 
>is inserted (/boot/faihttp://rom-o-matic.net/). In depth documentation about 
>booting via ethernet may be found at http://etherboot.sourceforge.net.
>
>Some network cards (e.g. Intel EtherExpress PRO 100) have a fixed boot 
>configuration, so they can only use the PXE boot protocol. This requires a 
>PXE Linux boot loader and a special version of the TFTP daemon. You have to 
>install the dhcp3-server, syslinux and atftpd package (apt-get install 
>syslinux dhcp3-server atftpd). First set up the DHCP daemon. A sample 
>configuration files can be found in 
>/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/dhcpd.conf.

Also it would be nice to have a small comment in /etc/fai/fai.conf that
NFSROOT should not be located on NFS-mounted path or apt will fail.

If the responsible for the FAI-documentation thinks, that one or more of these 
items belong to the FAQ-O-Matic I will add some. Hints for the correct places 
would be welcome.

Best regards

-- 
Niklaus Giger
Wieshoschet 6
CH-8753 Mollis
Tel. ++41 55 612 20 54 (privat)
Tel. ++41 55 618 64 68 (Geschäft)