Fai server can be a different architecture from clients?

[Steffen Grunewald]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 03:21:46PM -0500, wtautz wrote:
> Hi, I presume it's possible to put fai-server package
> on a machine of certain arch and have clients be
> on a different arch. I'm am thinking of installing
> amd64 clients using intel server. Can I have different
> nfsroot partitions depending on the architecture?

Yes. I've been doing this for years with a single server for i386
and alpha architectures, and have recently added amd64 to it.
You will have to build the NFSroot on a machine with the proper
architecture, then somehow transfer it to the server.
Make sure you're accessing different package repositories,
use the right PXE boot kernel (amd64 boots fine with i396 pxelinux.0),
and assign the correct nfsroot in your DHCP config.
(For Alphas, it's a bit different since they don't do PXE, but
the overall strategy remains the same.)
FAI offers the architecture as one of the basic classes (I386, X86_64,
etc.) so you may adjust your files and scripts accordingly.

>  I notice the
> fai-kernels package seems to be architecture dependent
> but it seems to me that one should be able to install these
> kernels on an fai server irrespective of the server's architecture
> and make them available for different clients?

As I said: you will have difefrent boot kernels (fai-chboot doesn't
respect the need for different kernels by default but IIRC you can tell
it which one to use)

S

-- 
Steffen Grunewald * MPI Grav.Phys.(AEI) * Am Mühlenberg 1, D-14476 Potsdam
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