FAI technical questions/issues

[Niall Young]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Alex wrote:

> i'm somewhat confused as to what versions of fai and fai-bootcd i
> should use.
> i obtained the latest versions of fai and fai-kernels off the fai
> homepage,
> however, the fai-bootcd utility will not work with the latest version
> of fai on woody (which is what i'm running).

fai-bootcd is designed to work with fai and fai-kernels from debian.org
You'll need to downgrade to the version in woody, not from the FAI
homepage, or:

> can i force the install and hack it to work?

Most probably, it should only need a few tweaks - maybe compare to
fai-bootcd 0.3.x (intended for use with fai and fai-kernels in sarge).

> what is my best option for creating a fully automated installation
> off
> cd rom?  should i be using sid to create the NFSROOT and .iso cd
> image?
>
> or should i downgrade fai to a version supported by the "stable"
> version
> of fai-bootcd (ie fai <= 2.3.4)?

Either will work, but I'd probably stick with woody and downgrade.

> /usr/share/doc/fai-bootcd/fai-bootcd.HOWTO.gz
> Your kernel on the machine where you are building the FAI BootCD must
> have
> loopback support compiled as a module.  The following option must be
> set in
> your .config
>     CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=m
> does this mean the kernel that ends up on the host machine requires
> this
> as a module? will it fail if you have this option set to "y" ?

No, this means the kernel on the machine where you're building the CD.

> why must this be as a module?

It's a limitation of mkinitrd-cd, I've asked for future versions to fix
this.

> it also mentios that these options must be set in the FAI kernel:
> The following extra options must be applied:
>
>     CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=y
>     CONFIG_IDE=y
>     CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y
>     CONFIG_ISO9660_FS=y
>     CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y
>     CONFIG_ZISOFS_FS=y
>
> does this mean i must RECOMPILE the fai kernel with these options?

If you're using the kernel in fai-kernel, yes - you must recompile with
these extra options.  Exactly what fai-bootcd.HOWTO says.

> my ultimate goal of building a fully self-contained automated
> installation
> of debian on CD seems like pretty hard work.  is fai/fai-bootcd the
> right
> road to take?

It works out of the box on sid/unstable, unfortunately there are a few
patches that had to be made to old versions of fai and mkinitrd-cd but
these aren't necessary for sid and hopefully when sarge goes stable
everything will just work.

However, you still need to configure FAI - once this is working it
should all just work (if you're running the right versions, see
http://holbytla.org/fai/)

The HOWTO should cover everything, if it doesn't please let me know
(privately) where you're stuck and I'll give you one-on-one help until
you're up and running.

> thanks all for any help you can provide.  i can certainly see the
> potential
> and power of fai but have pretty much failed to unleash any of that
> power
> at this stage.

Once you have FAI working, creating an fai-bootcd is fairly trivial.

Niall Young                                    Chime Communications Pty Ltd
niall at chime.net.au                            Level 6, 263 Adelaide Terrace
Ph: (+61) 08 9213 1330 / 0408 192 797         Perth, Western Australia 6000

    "Sitting on the couch, dog licking my feet...  It always gets
                   the creative juices flowing..."
                                        -- Roger Yerramsetti, March 2004