fai on cluster with debian x86_64

[Thomas Lange]

>>>>> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:54:57 +0100, Markus Uhlmann <markus.uhlmann at ifh.uka.de> said:

    > we are currently setting up a cluster using fai.
Hi Markus,

nice idea to install teh cluster with FAI. How many nodes?
Which FAI version are you using?

    > the problem then is that *sometimes* the superuser on the newly
    > installed client has no password; therefore it is impossible to "ssh"
    > into the system, although the network is up after reboot (e.g. "ping"
    > from outside sees the client).
Strange. Maybe some package is overwriting it?

The password is set in the script scripts/FAIBASE/10-misc
using the command
   echo "root:$ROOTPW" | $ROOTCMD chpasswd --encrypted
You may want to add an echo $ROOTPW, to see if the password is really
set before calling the command.


    > ROOTPW='itlrBHLS/AD36'
You should not show us your encrypted password.

    > strange thing: even when it *does* work, the variable "ROOTPW" does
    > not show up in the installation log files (i.e. "variables.log").
    > [this might be a security feature?]
Yep, for security reasons, the ROOTPW is not written to the log file.


BTW, I'm always very interested in user experiences with FAI. Can you
please fill out the FAI questionnaire
http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/questionnaire
and send it back to me when you finished a project with fai.
-- 
regards Thomas