Debian-LAN issues for wheezy

[Andreas B. Mundt]

Hi everybody,

as you might already know, the Debian-LAN project [1] tries to make
setting up a local network based on Debian as easy as possible.  To do
that, it strongly relies on FAI which in turn uses live-boot to
install the machines.

For the time being, there are a couple of bugs that spoil achieving
the goal of a simple setup [2]:


live-boot:
----------
The live CD created with fai-cd fails to boot due to a bug in
live-boot.  In scripts/boot/overlay.sh a temporary file system is
mounted on the directory the disk is already mounted on.  This makes
the disk image inaccessible and results in an error when mounting the
image using aufs.

The bug report <URL:http://bugs.debian.org/681579> tracks the issue
and provides a patch.  With this patch applied in the chroot (or on
the package' source), the resulting disk image from fai-cd works as
expected.

It looks as if live-boot is still under heavy development and I hope
the reported issue can still be solved for wheezy.  Can one of the
developers of live-boot please comment on this expectation?  Can I
provide anything to make that happen?


fai-cd
------
The disk created with fai-cd fails completely if there is no network
access.  The reason is that fai 4.0 copies the apt configuration from
the config space to the target in an early stage, ignoring the
sources.list pointing to the local mirror on the CD.

The bug report <URL:http://bugs.debian.org/682796> provides a patch
that implements the old behavior (use the sources.list from the CD)
if the installation happens from CD.

The disk created with fai-cd works as expected with this patch
applied.

Hopefully this issue can be fixed as well in time for wheezy.  Using
fai-cd is the simplest way of setting up a faiserver, it would be a
real pity if this approach fails in wheezy.  Please let me know if I
can do anything else to have this fixed in wheezy.


other issues
------------
Finally, installing via PXE-boot does not work for me right now.  The
reasons still need to be explored:  If I use live-boot, I end up with
"nfsmount: can't parse IP address: ''".  Using dracut freezes my
machine.  I'll try to test and debug that more on real hardware.


To sum up:  It would be great if we manage to get 'working' FAI and
live-boot packages into wheezy.  Please let me know how to help to
make that happen.

Best regards,

      Andi



[1] <URL:http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN>
[2] <URL:http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN/bootstrap/wheezy>


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A N D R E A S   B.   M U N D T

GPG key: 4096R/617B586D 2010-03-22 Andreas B. Mundt--<andreas.b.mundt at web.de>
                                   Andreas B. Mundt--<andi.mundt at web.de>

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