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John Bazik jsb at cs.brown.edu
Wed Oct 8 19:12:38 CEST 2003


On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 01:04:24PM +0200, Thomas Lange wrote:
> So please send me a short mail, if you have set up some computers
> using FAI. Also send me pointers to web pages or articles about FAI.

Brown University CS Dept converted from Solaris to Debian GNU/Linux as
our primary platform about 1.5 yrs ago.  We've used FAI from the start,
and today we have built (and occasionally rebuild) over 300 machines,
including all our server machines, with it.  We've standardized on
PXE installs.

We use FAI to get a base install.  We have our own home-grown stuff that
completes the installation and runs nightly to keep the machines in a
sane state.

One thing we've done recently is switch from your stock FAI kernels to
initrd kernels we built.  We needed to because of some new hardware with
NICs whose drivers couldn't be compiled into the kernel.  It took some
effort to get the initrd stuff right, but we're pretty happy with it.

Thanks for creating FAI.  Coming from Solaris, we were used to jumpstart,
and FAI really made the transition possible.  Also, I am rewriting our
homegrown stuff, and I've borrowed many good ideas from FAI.  When it's
done I'll share it.

John



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