FAI multi-arch

[Thomas Lange]

Hi Thoralf,

sure this is possible. A FAI server only provides TFTP, DHCP and NFS
services (and maybe http services) which do not depend on a certain
architecture.

Creating the nfsroot for AMD64 on a Raspberry Pi (cross-arch) may be
possibe but will take very loooong. I would suggest to create the
nfsroot on a amd64 host and then copy this nfsroot to the Raspberry
Pi. I never tried creating a cross-arch nfsroot, but I do not find a
reason why it shouldn't be possible. During fai-make-nfsroot we chroot
into a deboostraped minimal system. Nowadays the kernel/OS takes care
of calling qemu if it detects a different architecture if the package
qemu-user-static is installed. IIRC no special setup for executing
cros-arch binaries are needed today.

So I see no reason the fai-make-nfsroot for AMD64 is not working on an
ARM machine. It will just be slow.

-- 
viele Grüße Thomas

>>>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 20:51:20 +0200, Thoralf Schulze <thoralf.schulze at zendis.de> said:

    > Hi there -
    > is it possible to use a Raspberry Pi as a FAI server to automagically 
    > install AMD64 clients via PXE boot?

    > I am aware that it is possible to create disk images for different 
    > architectures, but couldn't find any pointers on creating a nfsroot and 
    > boot images for architectures differing from the FAI host. Any hints 
    > would be highly welcome …