FAI 3.2.4, live-initramfs + unionfs

[Henning Sprang]

Hi Thomas,

Before discussing your problems further, please make sure you read this:

http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/FAI_3.2_on_Etch

Please let me know of that makes things work for you - I authored this
page and want to complete it if some things are missing.

And surely some of my replies in this mail below - I only replied to the
things I know well and left out the rest :)


Thomas Roth wrote:
> [...]
> - The nfsroot location: I put "/srv/fai/nfsroot" into
> /etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf, yet the system is placed in
> /srv/fai/nfsroot/live/filesystem.dir".
> [...]

This is due to the unionfs system and the livehelper stuff used -
everything O.K. :)


> - Trying several combinations of "append" parameters, I once ended up
> with a client having the nfsroot mounted nicely as root, that is under
> "/". But there, "/tmp" was read-only, as were other crucial directories
> of the system. 
> [...]

You wrongly assume that the system has to be mounted on some specific
path - due to the use of unionfs and livehelper, this assumption is not
correct.


> So my questions are:  What is the correct directory structure for the
> nfsroot

It is correct as you describe it at the very start of your post, even if
it looks strange to you :)

> what is the correct PXE kernel append line,

For example, I have successfully used a file like this
(/srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg/C0A8008E.disable):

---
default debian-default

label debian-default
        kernel vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-486
        append initrd=initrd.img-2.6.18-5-486 ip=dhcp
FAI_CONFIG_SRC=nfs://installserver/srv/fai/config/ FAI_ACTION=install
root=/dev/nfs
nfsroot=INSTALLSERVER-IP:/srv/fai/nfsroot,v2,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768
FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt
---


Replace INSTALLSERVER-IP and installserver with correctv values for your
own infrastructure.


> and do I indeed
> need unionfs to get the whole thing working?

Yes, with FAI 3.2 you need it.
If you don't want unionfs, you have to keep using pre-3.2 versions of
FAI (or try to hack it right to work without unionfs - I don't know how
musch work that would be).

Livehelper(for which unionfs is a requirement) is the solution to the
problem that things needed for fai-cd have been removed from debian -
additionally, it solves some problems with a read-only nfsroot, and is
re-usable for nfsroot, fai-cd, usb-sticks - quite nice thing :)

FAI 3.2 is not yet thoroughly tested with lenny, but you can expect it
to work quite nice with standart Debian Kernels when the release comes
closer, which will by >2.6.22 then.

Henning