FAI-CD aborts after "mounting root filesystem"

[Henning Sprang]

Sebastian Schmidt wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm trying to create a FAI-CD for Ubuntu Jaunty which shouldn't need
> any network connection but take everything from CD.
> 
> For most config I followed in most parts this howto:
> http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/UbuntuJauntyInstallationHowTo .

Now that I'm reading this page in order to unsderstand what you are
doing and to be able to help you, I see it is quite confusing in some
points.
At the top, it says, it assumes you are preparing an installation of
Ubuntu from an Ubuntu server.

But the part with the base.tgz should not be relevant for installing
Ubuntu from an Ubuntu Server.
And for building a base.tgz you do _not_ need run the same distribution
you want to install. Yu can prepare a base image for Ubuntu on a Debian
System.


So, what are you really doing?
Are you building a fai-cd on an Ubuntu system, to install an Ubuntu System?
Or is the system on which you create the fai-cd a Debian system?
Which version of FAI do you use?

I'd guess, multi-distribution installs from a fai-cd built on a Debian
System will have some itches.

The rest of my answers below might be wrong depending on the questions
above, I still write some ideas and hints on what could be wrong:

> Then I created a mirror with fai-mirror. What is suspicious there is,
> that fai-mirror first takes all my wanted packages definied in my
> configspace from the ubuntu-mirror but than says "taking packages from
> base.tgz" and leeches them from the debian mirror?

Strange.
Check if all mirrors in /etc/fai/* are really Ubuntu and no Debian mirrors.


> No idea why he is
> doing it because I created a OS_UBUNTU_904_X32.tar.gz basefile like
> described in above tutorial but I also don't know if this behavior is
> right or wrong.

fai-mirror doesn't know what distribution you will be deploying and whyt
classes will be selected.
(on the other hand, it's really a bit odd that it sees a need for
pulling packages from base.tgz - these packages will be already
installed when the system will be deployed...)

> If I now create an image with fai-cd, boot it, choose my line in the
> menu, it aborts directly at the beginning after modprobing the needed
> modules in the "Mounting root file system..." step and sends me to the
> busybox.

That could be another totally different problem than the packages.
Not sure, what it could be.
Wrong entry for the root file system in your menu.list entry?

> I don't know where the error is. Do I have to specify something special
> in the menu.lst if I don't want to use a network connection? 

I don't think so, fai-cd default operation should be a network-less install.

Henning