Ubuntu FAI PPA and Lucid Lynx

[Robert Markula]

Hey,
in preparation for testing the Ubuntu FAI packages for Maverick I've
been testing the packages for Lucid extensively in the past few weeks.

As starting point I used the examples provided in
/usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple/.

It's all about fai (3.3.5ubuntu3) from the Ubuntu FAI PPA [1] on Ubuntu
10.04.1 'Lucid Lynx'. It works quite well, apart from a few glitches:

# 1. In /etc/fai/apt/sources.list the repository

<snip>
deb http://security.geo.debian.org/debian-security lenny/updates main
contrib non-free
</snip>

has to be replaced with

<snip>
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security lenny/updates main
contrib non-free
</snip>


# 2. In /etc/fai/NFSROOT the package 'linux-image' provided some
problems. For some odd reasons the NFSROOT could not be built using this
generic package. After entering the chroot environment and trying to do
an 'apt-get install linux-image' I got the error message that this
package could not be found.
Solution: Replacing all instances of 'linux-image' in /etc/fai/NFSROOT
with 'linux-image-486', 'linux-image-amd64' etc..


# 3. The aufs module is not present in the NFSROOT by default. Thus I
kept getting the following error message:

<snip>
mount aufs on /root failed with option
noatime,dirs=/cow=rw:/live/image/live/filesystem.dir=rr
[...]
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
</snip>

This was solved by adding the package 'aufs-modules-2.6-486' to
/etc/fai/NFSROOT.


# 4. GRUB is not properly initiated on the target host; the error log reads:

<snip>
fai.log:GRUB_PC/10-setup     FAILED with exit code 1.
shell.log:chroot: cannot run command `grub-mkconfig': No such file or
directory
shell.log:GRUB_PC/10-setup     FAILED with exit code 1.
status.log:GRUB_PC/10-setup     FAILED with exit code 1.
</snip>

This is due to the fact that 'grub-mkconfig' is not present in the
NFSROOT. Changing the line

<snip>
$ROOTCMD grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
</snip>

to

<snip>
$ROOTCMD update-grub
</snip>

in /srv/fai/config/scripts/GRUB_PC/10-setup solves this last issue.


Next I'll test the FAI 3.4.0 packages for Maverick. Stay tuned.

Cheers,
Robert


PS. Stephan, I've added you CC: so this mail doesn't get lost in the
shuffle.

[1] https://launchpad.net/~fai/+archive/ppa