Target host error.log created by fai client

[George VerDuin]

I need to set the black screen issue aside for the moment...

I'm looking for things to fix but finding error messages about things 
that also seem to be working fine.  My experience chronicled below makes 
me wonder if I should research the source cause of messages in error.log 
and contribute mods to FAI that might remove many of them...?

I may be doing something unusual by using apt-cacher-ng instead of a 
local mirror, yet cacher seems to be functioning OK by looking at 
casher-log.  What follows in this message are my observations that seem 
to be leading me astray.  My request is simple:  Point me in a better 
direction?  I apologise if what follows seems more colloquial than 
technical...:-(

First from error.log I see three entries:

fai.log:W: Failed to fetch 
http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/wheezy/Release.gpg  Could n
ot resolve 'http.debian.net'
fai.log:W: Failed to fetch 
http://security.debian.org/debian-security/dists/wheezy/updates
/Release.gpg  Could not resolve 'security.debian.org'
fai.log:W: Failed to fetch 
http://fai-project.org/download/dists/wheezy/Release.gpg  Could
  not resolve 'fai-project.org'

I can confirm that from the special subnet used for fai-client, ping 
reports "unknown host ..." for the three sites shown above.  The three 
unresolved sites match the "sources.list" provided by fai_4.0.8.  While 
looking at /etc/apt I see:

./trusted.gpg.d:
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4084 Jun  2  2012 
debian-archive-squeeze-automatic.gpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2853 Jun  2  2012 debian-archive-squeeze-stable.gpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3780 Jun  2  2012 debian-archive-wheezy-automatic.gpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2851 Jun  2  2012 debian-archive-wheezy-stable.gpg

Now what I see here seems strange for the old squeeze entries and the 
missing fai-project entry.  I remember some advise to ignore warning 
level messages from .log, but the above seems to lead into messages that 
then lead to an unsuccessful build later on.

So while checking the apt-get functionality, at the target host when I:

...# aptitude clean
...# aptitude update

then aptitude seems to function quite normally thru apt-cacher-ng, as 
reported on console and confirmed by the cacher log.  However in 
error.log there follows many fai.log entries similar to the next three:

fai.log:No candidate version found for nfs-common
fai.log:Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "rdate"
fai.log:Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "rsync"

Wait a moment -- "can't find rsync"?  This is non-sensical.  In fact 
rsync 3.0.9-4 is installed from stable.  So what is going on?  Why 
should I worry?

After 90 messages like the above we finally get to the end where I see 
the following:

fai.log:DEBIAN/40-misc       FAILED with exit code 1.
fai.log:GRUB_PC/10-setup     FAILED with exit code 127.
shell.log:cp: cannot create regular file `/target/etc/fai/fai.conf': No 
such file or direc
tory
shell.log:DEBIAN/40-misc       FAILED with exit code 1.
shell.log:chroot: failed to run command `grub-mkdevicemap': No such file 
or directory
shell.log:chroot: failed to run command `grub-probe': No such file or 
directory
shell.log:chroot: failed to run command `grub-install': No such file or 
directory
shell.log:chroot: failed to run command `update-grub': No such file or 
directory
shell.log:GRUB_PC/10-setup     FAILED with exit code 127.
shell.log:ERROR: No kernel was installed. Have a look at shell.log
status.log:DEBIAN/40-misc       FAILED with exit code 1.
status.log:GRUB_PC/10-setup     FAILED with exit code 127.

In looking over shell.log I see some failures that are troubling, but 
nothing related to my input (nor failures for me to input per the FAI 
Guide) thus far.  For full disclosure -- I have not fully digested 
shell.log messages yet.

Using a local saying: "I feel like I am spinning my wheels."  My work 
might be good as a training exercise, but is not very productive as a 
system builder?

It now seems best to stop and re-consider what I am doing...

Can you resist the flames?
Geo