Kernel panic - FAI 4.1.1

[Rui Teixeira]

First of all thank you for the clarification, this is some squeezed juice
that must be in some FAQ, good information. Just one thing that I think is
missing: the use of apt source.list. I read somewhere writed by you Thoomas:
Do not mix /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/fai/apt/sources.list. FAI uses
the later for building the nfsroot.
So I supose that the mirror is created based on /etc/apt/sources.list, is
that correct? I think this information is the icing on the cake of
your explanation :)

About my installation, even with linux-image-486 it doesn't seem to work,
same error:
>error: cannot read the Linux header.
>error: you need to load the kernel first.
>
>Press any key to continue...

I will try to save mirror messages and send it here.

thanks!


2014-05-13 15:38 GMT+01:00 Toomas Tamm <tt-fai at kky.ttu.ee>:

> On Tue, 2014-05-13 at 14:23 +0100, Rui Teixeira wrote:
> > in fact a stupid error... I feel stupid... But even with that class
> > defined I don't get it, in NSFROOT I've defined that I want
> > linux-image-486, why I have to told FAI that I want it again in
> > packages_config/DEBIAN ? And more, I cant define linux-image-486 in
> > NSFROOT and in packages_config/DEBIAN define another one... So, what's
> > the point to define it in NSFROOT?
>
> I think you are confusing the nfs root and the system being installed.
> Don't worry, you are not alone. After eight years of using FAI and
> hundreds of installs, I still sometimes make the same kind of
> error... :-)
>
> I shall try to explain this in some detail.
>
> The so-called nfsroot is a small but fully capable instance of Debian,
> which gets booted when you perform a FAI installation, and once the
> installation is over, it is not run on the same host again, until the
> next install (or perhaps a sysinfo or softupdate run, but that's another
> story).
>
> The nfsroot usually resides on an installation server (aka FAI server)
> and is exported via NFS, and mounted by the kernel on the computer being
> installed. In such setup, the kernel is usually delivered via TFTP,
> although I have successfully used CDs and flash sticks to boot the
> kernel, and then mount the nfsroot via NFS.
>
> Alternatively, the nfsroot can be put on a CD of flash stick, together
> with a kernel and a package archive, to perform an installation without
> use of a network connection. This is called a "FAI CD" and you appear to
> be pursuing that route.
>
> The nfsroot is (re)created when you issue the "fai-make-nfsroot"
> command, which may be also part of "fai-setup" or "fai-cd" scripts (not
> sure of the latter). The packages which go into this system are listed
> in the file called "NFSROOT", and that includes the kernel which will be
> running during the installation. This is not necessarily the same kernel
> that you wish to run on the system after it is installed, although in
> many cases they will be the same.
>
> Once the kernel has booted and mounted the nfsroot over NFS or from the
> CD or flash stick, it executes a series of scripts which make up the FAI
> proper. These scripts install the system on the hard disk(s) of the
> computer they are running on. The computer is usually called the
> "target" and its root directory is, in fact, mounted as "/target" during
> the install.
>
> The lists of packages that you put into package_config in the
> configuration space are now inspected, and the packages corresponding to
> the classes you specify for the particular host get installed
> into /target and its subdirectories. These are entirely separate lists
> from the packages that make up the nfsroot - no package is copied from
> nfsroot to the target system directly (although there is a nuance here -
> see below). In particular, you need to specify a kernel here, and it may
> be a different kernel than the one which was installed into the nfsroot,
> as long as it is able to boot (and meets your needs) on the target
> system.
>
> The nuance I skipped over earlier is that a minimal set of packages (the
> so-called essential packages) are not installed from the
> corresponding .deb's, but are unpacked from a tar-file directly
> into /target instead. This speeds up the installation, and also makes it
> possible to do complicated things like cross-distribution and
> cross-architecture installations. Ignoring the latter, the tar-file is
> usually called base.tar.xz (or .gz) and is built together with the
> nfsroot, and resides in /var/tmp of the nfsroot.
>
> When building base.tar.xz, the fai-make-nfsroot script makes use of the
> packages and other content which are being installed into the nfsroot,
> so there, indeed, the content of nfsroot influences what is eventually
> ending up on the target system. However, the creation of the base file
> occurs very early during fai-make-nfsroot, before the packages you list
> in the NFSROOT file get installed into it. Thus no kernel or other
> packages specific to your system end up in the base file. These still
> need to be listed separately in various files under package_config.
>
> I hope this clarifies things a little, and remains in the list archive
> for future reference of others as well.
>
> Regards,
>
> Toomas Tamm
>
>
>
>
>
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