Possibly silly: FAI served from OS X?

[Holger Levsen]

Hi Mattew,

On Monday 27 September 2004 19:07, Matthew Braun wrote:
> I don't want to use FAI to install OS X, I just want use an OS X box to
> serve the appropriate files. I want to use it to install Debian onto
> i386 platforms. It's just that I can't use most of the install scripts
> since they expect a Debian (or "normal" Unix host) and OS X is kind of
> weird under the hood (what admin tools are available, where things go,
> etc).

Ok. Well, you need at least a debian chroot to make the nfsroot. I don't think 
that it's possible to use a debian chroot on mac os x (cause debian normally 
needs a linux kernel), so you will need access to a x86-linux box to create 
the nfsroot. Then you can tar it, transfer it to your mac and serve it via 
nfs. 

> This may seem like an odd idea ("why not just do it from a debian box
> like most sane beings"), but it's because I use my laptop everywhere
> and I'd like to avoid having a separate machine just for FAI.

Well, i'm a happy user of an fai-server on an ibook running debian, and 
there's no mac os on it any more. But your millage / taste may vary ;-)

Anyway - if you have the chance you should start with two pure debian x86 
machines, one server and one client. Why not, if they're unused at the moment 
(as you want to install them with fai) ? And it's much easier to learn fai 
and follow the guide that way...


regards,
 Holger