FAIBASE/10-misc and hostname

[Anders Jackson]

mån 2013-03-11 klockan 19:46 +0100 skrev Thomas Neumann:
> Hiya
> 
> [I'm not ~the~ Thomas, but I still want to answer.]
> 
> On Monday, March 11, 2013 06:15:13 PM Holger Parplies wrote:
> > Some of these are FAI tasks, some are not. You can probably argue about
> > whether hostname and /etc/network/interfaces are the responsibility of FAI
> > or of the config space.
> 
> Then the wise master nodded and asked the initiate: What is an 'installation'?

:-)

Why not a step by step guidance from a clean system and then add things
to end up with a configuration space with enough to have a resonable
system that shown the most important technics that is needed to master
when doing fai installation/upgrade?

Might be something to work on in the wiki space?  I am totally beginner
and have just lurked the list to pick some stuff up, but never done a
proper installation. Have not had the time for that. :-(

/Anders

> Sorry, I just had to do it, because this issue felt like it needed a koan. 
> Don't take it personally.

> > [...] I'm sure there are reasons for what appears to me to be mixing up
> > necessary installation steps and facultative installation steps in a FAIBASE
> > class. I'd just like to understand them :).
> 
> Everything in FAIBASE _is_ optional and depends on your environment:
> - partition layout (chroot / virtual containers)
> - pre-seeding (may not even be possible (RPM?))
> - packages (base image can contain everything)
> - mountpoints (chroot / virtual containers)
> - network interfaces (chroot / virtual containers)
> - config files (handled via some other config management tool)
> 
> (The simple example features 2 hooks, but it wouldn't matter much if they were 
> simply left out.)
> 
> FAI provides a low-level abstraction and the config space is the environment-
> specific implementation. With the exception of installing a bootloader you can 
> install a standalone client with just a bunch of text files (disk_config, 
> packages, ...) and exactly two commands (fcopy /etc/network/interfaces and the 
> one for setting the root password.)
> 
> The bootloader issue is pretty nasty though, because the 'correct' 
> configuration is linked very tightly to the installed distribution, your 
> environment and possibly even the underlying 'hardware'. (Installing a 
> paravirtualised XenServer instance was a nightmare, because Citrix did not 
> actually parse the bootloader, but circumvented grub completely instead read 
> the menu.lst directly and expected to find specifically named boot configuration. 
> Took a while to figure that one out...)
> 
> bye
> thomas

-- 
Anders Jackson, universitetsadjunkt i datavetenskap, Högskolan i Gävle
Tel: 026 6488764 | Fax: 026 648758 | Webb: http://www.hig.se/~jackson/
Rum: 99:533 | Högskolan i Gävle, ATM-akademin, SE-801 76 GÄVLE
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