Starting a FAI installation using kexec - technical thread

[Henning Sprang]

Torsten Schlabach wrote:
> In contrast to what has been said here before, there seems to be a
> difference between the stock Debian initrd from the kernel package and
> the FAI initrd. (I am just talking about the initrd, not about the
> kernel as such.)

In case you mean my post on this: I did not say there's no difference.

You can boot an nfsroot with a plain debian initrd, TOO, as you can with
an livehelper-enhanced initrd, and as you could with the special FAI
Kernels that did exist before etch.

The special FAI Kernel is njot available anymore, so let's talk about
the current way FAI works - plain debian Kernel plus special initrd, and
compare it with the plain Debian initrd:

Both initrd's have different scripts inside, expect a different
structure of the nfsroot (plain debian doesn't require the live.dir
stuff and such), and might expect or ignore different kernel commandline
parameters.


> So I might want to make some experiments with modifying the scripts
> inside the initrd.

If you're going that far, anway, you might start with the plain deian
initrd.The main reason why FAI uses the livehelper stuff is the fai-cd
(and the fact that it's easier to support one system that works on usb,
cd, and PXE).

With your sepcial case, I'd start with the total unchanged system.

Or, even, before starting to fiddle with initrd, why not build your own
install kernel with the ip-auto and nfs root flags enabled?
Then you have no initrd again.
Your situation is so special anyway, that you will not benefgit from
enhancements anyway (even worse, with every change and update you will
have to adjust you patches to the initrd stuff).

> 
> The question may be OT on this list

Most things necessary to get a system installed with FAI is OT here, I
think :)

Henning