debootstrapping multidistributions

[Fredrik Eriksson]

mamadou diop wrote:
> Hi Frederik,
>  
> In the FAI guide, it is said to adjust the sources.list file after 
> placing the base.tgz in the basefiles/ directory.
> There are two sources.list files : one in the /etc/fai/apt and another 
> in the base.tgz. Which one of them needs
> to be adjusted.
What exactly are you trying to do?

As I understand it you want to be able to "simultaneously" install 
clients with different (Debian?) releasees, without having to 
reconfigure anything at the FAI server every time you want to install 
another release that is.
If this is the case it is very possible indeed. We install both 32bit 
and 64bit Lenny and Squeeze.

To be able to do this we have two different fai-nfsroots, one for Lenny 
and one for Squeeze (both 64bit since all our machines have 64bit CPUs). 
They have two separate /etc configdirs with apt/sources.list 
corresponding to each release, you use the -C flag with 
make-fai-nfsroot(8) to define your configdir and the -B flag to define 
the name (and location) och your base.tar.gz.
We have four base files, one for each flavour - 32bit or 64bit Lenny or 
Squeeze. As a side note we now build them with pbuilder --create and 
maintain them with a pbuilder --update cronjob. This makes them larger 
than the ones we used to build with fai-make-nfsroot, but thats fine 
since we keep them updated and our network is fast. It actually speeds 
up the installation process. It is a fine tool, pbuilder.

To get the right sources.list for each installation we use the method i 
described in the previous message.

> 2010/11/23 Fredrik Eriksson <fredrik.eriksson at axis.com 
> <mailto:fredrik.eriksson at axis.com>>
>
>     mamadou diop wrote:
>
>         Because of the sources.list file which only points to a Debian
>         release at a given time, it seems to me
>         that it is impossible to install simultaneously Debian clients
>         with differents releases. Is my opinion true?
>
>     We actually have this in our current testing environment.
>     What you typically want is to have two files in your fai/config/
>     tree, a sources.list file and a hook script (at least this is how
>     we solve it). The sources.list file should be named after a class,
>     where you for example define what distribution to run, and be put
>     in fai/config/files/etc/apt/sources.list/, i.e
>     fai/config/files/etc/apt/sources.list/LENNY_AMD64.
>     As for the hook script ours is called
>     fai/config/hooks/updatebase.DEFAULT and is a small shell script to
>     say the least:
>
>     #! /bin/bash
>
>     fcopy -Bi /etc/apt/sources.list
>
>     What it does is that it takes the file based on your defined
>     class, for example
>     fai/config/files/etc/apt/sources.list/SQUEEZE_X86, and copy it to
>     /etc/apt/sources.list on your target system. Thus you can have
>     multiple sources.list files aimed at different releases (and
>     distributions or architectures if needed).
>

Regards
--
Fredrik
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