Docu update

[Carl J. Van Arsdall]

Oliver Osburg wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I plan to do the messy work to update the documentation. My first step
> was to work through the wish- and buglist on
>
> http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/Etch-doc-todo
>
> Basic plan is first to fix all of the bugs in it (wrong paths in
> descriptions, etc, etc) and then exend the guide _a little_ according to
> the wishlist.
>
> Basic comments, suggestions?
>   

I don't know if I missed this in the manual or if its just not there, 
but I thought it would have been useful to have a "Scripting for FAI" 
type of guide.  This guide would define various internal variables like 
$target, the appropriate way to exit a bash script for FAI (like a 
description of the method used in the examples) things like that.  
Perhaps even a simple and a complex script demonstrating the 
capabilities and the documentation to support things that are unique (or 
necessary) to FAI.  That might go beyond "a little", I'd be willing to 
help/edit too, but I don't know enough of what's going on to write that 
document myself.

There's also a howto on the wiki about configuring/compiling extra 
kernels, I think that would be a useful addition to the manual "how to 
make a kernel" that covers necessary or recommended options for install 
and client kernels, and adding them to your local apt repository using a 
command like reprepro.  (again, all stuff someone could figure out, but 
that would have helped me when i was most clueless, especially if all of 
that information had been in a single place instead of scattered).  
That's another one I can help with (or update the wiki page, and put a 
link to it in the manual, i don't know how you guys like to approach docs).

A third thing on my wishlist: supporting heterogeneous computing farms 
(having one fai server doing both i386/amd64 and the special steps to 
take in order to set that up).  Maybe an entry in an FAQ?

And the last thing, a high-level "scripts and defaults put into fai".  
This might be one i missed in the manual too (i feel like i read it a 
million times, but something always eludes me and it has been a while, I 
don't remember all of what is in there).  What i'm talking about here is 
how by default nodes will get the class: FAIBASE.  Following that, the 
scripts in /srv/fai/config/scripts/FAIBASE are executed and may alter 
settings that a user cares about.    Again, I know you could just go and 
read the scripts, but it would be cool to know how the system would work 
right out of the box and what scripts you may want to edit before really 
digging into each script.

Ah, sorry for so much, I guess I really like documentation.  I'm also 
happy to help where I can.

-carl

-- 

Carl J. Van Arsdall
cvanarsdall at mvista.com
Build and Release
MontaVista Software