packages avail during install

[Peter Keller]

Hello,

On Tue, Jul 08, 2014 at 04:41:14PM +0200, Holger Parplies wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thomas Neumann wrote on 2014-07-08 09:36:55 +0200 [Re: packages avail during install]:
> > On Monday 07 July 2014 17:42:58 Peter Keller wrote:
> > > During the installation procedure in FAI 4.2, I found I need a certain
> > > package. [...]
> > 
> > If you just want to install a package in the nfsroot you can do
> > 
> >   chroot /srv/fai/nfsroot su -
> >   apt-get update
> >   apt-get install <package>
> >
> > [...]
> > There's no need to completely rebuild the nfsroot.
> 
> you just need to keep in mind that if you *do* rebuild the nfsroot later on
> the package will "vanish", unless you also add it to /etc/fai/NFSROOT (so you
> should probably do that, even if you skip rebuilding the nfsroot :).
> 
> Another thing to note is that 'apt-get' by default installs recommended
> packages along with your selection. You can avoid that either by using
> 
> 	apt-get --no-install-recommends install <package>
> 
> or, once and for all, by putting the line
> 
> 	APT::Install-Recommends "false";
> 
> in a file $NFSROOT/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/95norecommends (which will probably
> disappear, too, if you rebuild the nfsroot, so you should copy it to
> /etc/fai/apt/apt.conf.d).

Also excellent!


As some feedback, some of the hardest things to figure out with FAI is
(in no particular order):

A) Figure out how choose a 32-bit or 64-bit installation from a 64-bit
fai server.

B) Choosing between different distros (to install) on the install client
that are different from the fai server distro. (Multiple NFSROOTS? How
do I choose between them? etc) The interaction of the NFSROOT and the
base.tar.gz is confusing.

C) The interaction of the NFSROOT repo and the repos used by the
installed machine. (Setting different policies for both, etc)

D) How do I manage an nfsroot effectively? I shouldn't make changes to
it so I can regenerate it easily, but I have to, so what's the best way
to manage this?

E) The fai-monitor daemon is the thing that disables the installation of
the client machine after it finishes installing. This should be standardly
run on the fai server with an /etc/init.d script by default to ensure
that install clients don't go into an endless reboot cycle.  (I wrote
such a script and it works nicely.)  It just seems FAI is broken out
of the box without this (IMHO) required functionality.
    Also, the fai-monitor protocol from the client is too weak and the
fai-monitor-gui's visualization gets garbled easily. It would be nice
if the /tmp/fai/fai.log file was pushed to the fai-monitor daemon so
I could click on a little expander in the fai-monitor-gui and see the
realtime output of the machine as it is installing. a real GTK+ program
for the visualizer would be better.

Thank you!

-pete