Thank you and good bye.

[Henning Sprang]

Hi Adrian,
Thanks for your interesting thoughts.

It's not good that you seem to have a bad impression about FAI
maintenance in Ubuntu.

Being a (very passive, admittedly) member of the FAI UBuntu team myself,
 I can explain the reasons for me:

I'm just not using Ubuntu as a server OS myself, because on servers I'm
totally content with the stability and features Debian gives me there.
I have a lot of things to do, and just started a freelancing business,
that needs to get a start first before I can do things that only maybe,
very indirectly, sometimes might help me pay my rent.
So there simply isn't much time left.
Your mail with a call for test your packages was in my Inbox some weeks,
until some days ago I realized I will not get to it and archived it.

Maybe FAI packages in Ubuntu should be removed totally as long as we
don't have a team of people really commited and with enough time to take
care FAI is really working in Ubuntu.

Some comments about other things you say:

Adrian Gibanel Lopez wrote:
> I want to thank you for all the answers you have given to my questions.
> In my opinnion you should use the wiki more and not ask the people to
> search messages in the mailing list but it is just my opinnion.

As you see above - the small amount of people working on FAI is busy
enough developing when they find the time and giving support on Mailing
lists.
It's the task of the people who get valaueable answers to go get an
account in the wiki and document solutions they find.


> I was able to finish my thesis on time and I passed it.

Congratulations!

> Although FAI is good thing I am no longer interested on it. 

But I think I don't get exactly your reasons for this from this mail.
Is it only the lacking support for using Ubuntu as a FAI Server?
Because we don't find the time, in addition to give people all answers
they need when they ask, to document everything thoroughly?

(I'm really interested, please don't take these questions as an offense!)

> Whenever I
> need to use it again I will get a Debian distribution and begin to enjoy
> it with my thesis steps.

I don't understand the menaing of this one.

> I am very upset about Ubuntu development. I know that not everybody at
> Ubuntu team can update the FAI version as needed but what the hell, I have
> tried to change that.

I can only talkk for myself, bu I think I remember that is the case for
multiple FAI UBuntu Team members.

> I still ask myself if FAI does work in Ubuntu 9.04 (serving Ubuntu 9.04 to
> the installation clients). I bet that no.

It's not very unlikely.

> You know the other day I dreamt about FAI having an script run after the m
> mkinitfs run that modified the generated initrd. 

That might be possible.

> Or that FAI had a fork, a
> parallel build of initramfs-tools and live-initramfs with another name. 
> just an initramfs-tools fork that relied on most initramfs-tools and
> live-initamfs files but had its own files.

I guess, that would be too much work to maintain.
But I cannot really judge about this specific problem, and what's the
best solution for it.


> But this is too much complex. Ockham would be upset.

Who is Ockham and why would he be upset? The initrd maintainer in Ubuntu?

> It is probably better
> to fix the current initramfs-tools and live-initramfs.

Fixing the package you depend on if it's clearly a bug that prevents
your's from working correctly is usually the best solution - in case
it's maintainer is cooperative. A fork is usually the last choice if
nothing else works.

One last question: did you think about running FAI from a Debian server?
Installaing Ubuntu (and Debian, Redhat-based, and others) from there
should be no problem and the support for FAI in Debian is usually quite
good.

I'm not happy to hear you leaving the list because such complications.

Henning



-- 
Henning Sprang
http://www.sprang.de
+49 (0) 176 82188257