Direct FAI to install medium..?

[Jurrie Overgoor]

On 09/02/2011 11:56 AM, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
>> The machine actually boots from USB the second time. FAI loads from
>> USB stick (I can tell: the stick is blinking, and booting is slower
>> than from HD). At first, the Linux kernel is loaded, and then initrd
>> I think...
>> Then, FAI (or is it the Linux kernel?) needs to find out where its
>> files and scripts are, so it can install and run them. At that
>> point, I want it to find the USB stick and mount it. But instead, it
>> finds the recovery partition and mounts that.
>>
> Hmm, FAI doesn't try to be smart in any way - it shouldn't "find" anything, it
> will only use whatever was configured. Let's see which files could possibly be
> concerned:
>
> - The boot loader. Hopefully the one from USB.
> - The kernel and its initrd. Apparently the one from the USB stick is used.
> - The root file system and the main FAI scripts. The boot loader configuration
>    (kernel options) will fix the root file system to be used. Should be taken
>    from your USB stick as well (just check which FAI version is shown in the FAI
>    logo).
> - The config space. Configured in your fai.conf.

Hi Michael,

I didn't have time sooner to get back to this issue, but now I've fixed it!

So FAI is built upon Debian's boot-live scripts. And that's where the 
problem was: it was boot-live that preferred my recovery partition over 
my usb stick. But, luckily, boot-live supports a lot of boot options. I 
needed to add "live-media=removable-usb live-media-timeout=10" to 
/etc/fai/grub.cfg. The "live-media" option forces boot-live to prefer 
usb sticks, and the "live-media-timeout" forces boot-live to wait a 
little while before scanning the devices. (Usb devices need some time to 
initialize.)

Thanks for your help!

With kind regards,

Jurrie


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