Installing kernel's for local boot

[Henning Sprang]

Hi Carl,

On 10/10/06, Carl J. Van Arsdall <cvanarsdall at mvista.com> wrote:
> I've been playing with getting FAI setup for a couple weeks now.  I've
> spent a lot of time with the manual as well as the howto for installing
> custom kernels.

There's a howto for that? It's just a package_config line (see below).
Or do you mean the install kernel that's placed in the nfsroot?
This is documented in the README of the fai-kernels package (or at
least in some file in /usr/share/doc/fai-kernels).

>  The thing is, the howto is pretty dated.  It comments
> putting files in files/packages which was deprecated in 2.54 from what I
> can tell.  So there are a number of things confusing me, but I've done
> my best to try and figure them out.

Which howto is this? If it's part of the FAI distribution, we should
file a bugreport on this problem - but I am not sure which howto you
mean.

> So, my question, the boot kernel is always going to be vmlinuz install
> or whatever you point to using fai-chboot right?

As far as I remember, fai-chboot puts the kernel from the nfsroot into
the tftp directory.

>  From the comments in
> the conf file, the kernel from make-fai-nfsroot.conf is the kernel that
> will boot via nfs.

Actually, you can't boot a kernel via nfs. The machine needs at least
aminimal kernel to get started with nfs. Which comments in which conf
file do you mean? This one in make-fai-nfsroot.conf:

# this kernel package will be used when booting the install clients
#KERNELPACKAGE=/usr/lib/fai/kernel/linux-image-2.6.16-fai-kernels_1_i386.deb
KERNELPACKAGE=/usr/lib/fai/kernel/linux-image-2.6.17-fai-kernels_1_i386.deb

That means, this kernel get's installed into the nfsroot, fai-chboot
uses it to make it available via tftp, and all the stuff that isn't
needed to mount the nfsroot is compiled as modules and loaded after
the nfsroot is mounted.
The nfsroot kernel is only used during installation.

> Anyhow, following that stuff..  what's the best way to configure fai to
> install a specific kernel for class?

If you mean the kernel to put on the install client, just put the
kernel package name in a package list in package_config, and make the
kernel you want to install available in an apt repository.

Henning