Newbie-Questions: Install debian x86 from Solaris server

[Mark Asbach]

Hi FAI users,

I'm sorry to ask such a basic question, but searching the mailing list archives and googling didn't yield substantial information on this topic.

Being new to FAI and somewhat new to debian/Linux, I try to get started in setting up our chair's student lab with FAI. We've got some inhomogenity in the hardware used, but I understand that I could handle that via the classes mechanism (more on that later on). However my problems start at an earlier point, namely with setting up the server.

At the moment we only have one debian workstation (mine), some spare clients that I want to test the installation with and a Sun Enterprise running Solaris 8 that is our workgroup's server. Now I want the sun to give out the NFS shares but somehow I got to setup the bootable FAI root from my debian machine, right? Unfortunately the tutorial only tells me to call "fai-setup" for the first part (?) and isn't very verbose on what I could do to manually set the whole system up on a remote machine. BTW: I don't need network bootable installs or a local mirror, so a correct NFS setup on the Sun should suffice, I hope.

Could someone please point me to some tips or a tutorial on that?

In addition, I'm a bit confused on how to get the manual stuff automated (like compiling the nvidia kernel-module for a kernel like 2.6-i686-SMP, or installing java or intel's icc, startig with a different kernel, etc.). Is there a place where I can find more examples (other than those installed with FAI)?

Thanks a lot,

Mark
-- 
  Dipl.-Ing. Mark Asbach                  Tel +49 (0)241-80-27678
  Institut für Nachrichtentechnik         Fax +49 (0)241-80-22196
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