debootstrapping multidistributions

[Michael Tautschnig]

Hi Rob,

> On 10/29/2010 03:31 AM, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> >>>What is the best way to make the basefile.tar.gz?  Should we
> >>>do a debootstrap and tar up the files before booting the
> >>>bootstrapped system?
> >>And, reading http://fai-project.org/fai-guide/ar01s07.html, I'm also
> >>wondering where
> >>I can put a hook in FAI to create the basefiles.tar.gz on a newly
> >>bootstrapped
> >>system which is being built by fai.
> >>
> >>It seems the hook would go right before the "configure" task.  Correct?
> >
> >I don't really get why you would want to create the .tar.gz file *on* a
> >bootstrapped system; as you said, you'd use debootstrap and tar up the files,
> >which you could do on any system with debootstrap installed. Copy the .tar.gz
> >into your config space (the basefiles/ directory) and be happy.
> 
> Sorry, that did seem a little redundant.  I was wondering if there
> was anything done by FAI in addition to the debootstrap that might
> give us a "better" basefile, especially if the target is a specific
> hardware config on which many machines will be installed by FAI.
>

The only thing that FAI/make-fai-nfsroot does is an rm of a few files; for full
details please have a look at the create_base() function of make-fai-nfsroot.

> Also I'm thinking of adding a switch (such as variable or class)
> which would cause the basefile.tgz to be created (and possibly
> transmitted back to the server via the logfile saving mechanism).
> 
> Then we could easily flip the switch to generate an updated
> basefile.tgz without the manual steps of running debootstrap/tar
> outside of FAI.  My experience has been that the basefile.tgz speeds
> up the FAI install, but after a time, the basefile.tgz gets "stale"
> and must be refreshed periodically as the packages become out of
> date.
> 
> I'm also thinking that possibly the basefiles.tgz could be built
> later, after more packages are installed, which would make an even
> faster FAI bootstrap install.  Maybe this will work only if the
> hardware is identical?
> 

I was hoping that someone else with more experience of using different basefiles
would reply - seems like nobody has done so thus far. basefiles in a way are
like disk images: It makes installation really fast, but you'll have to update
them regularly and system-specific stuff cannot be incorporated. I'd therefore
guess, yess, that a larger basefile makes bootstrapping faster.

Hope this helps,
Michael

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