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FAI Guide (Fully Automatic Installation)

Abstract

This manual describes the fully automatic installation package for Debian GNU/Linux. This includes the installation of the package, planning and creating of the configuration and how to deal with errors.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2000-2007 Thomas Lange

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution or on the World Wide Web at the GNU website. You can also obtain it by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Availability
  • 1.2 Motivation
  • 1.3 Overview and concepts
  • 1.4 How does FAI work?
  • 1.5 Features
• 2 Quickstart - For the impatient user
• 3 Installing FAI
  • 3.1 Requirements
  • 3.2 How to create a local Debian mirror
  • 3.3 Setting up FAI
    • 3.3.1 Troubleshooting the setup
• 4 Preparing booting
  • 4.1 Enabling PXE on a 3Com network card with boot PROM
  • 4.2 Booting from network card with a PXE conforming boot ROM
  • 4.3 Creating a boot floppy
  • 4.4 Booting from a CD-ROM
  • 4.5 Booting from USB stick
  • 4.6 Collecting Ethernet addresses
  • 4.7 Configuration of the BOOTP daemon
    • 4.7.1 Troubleshooting BOOTP daemon
  • 4.8 Configuration of the DHCP daemon
  • 4.9 Boot messages
    • 4.9.1 Troubleshooting the boot messages
  • 4.10 Collecting other system information
  • 4.11 Checking parameters from BOOTP and DHCP servers
  • 4.12 Rebooting the computer
• 5 Overview of the installation sequence
  • 5.1 Monitoring the installation
  • 5.2 Booting the kernel
  • 5.3 Set up FAI
  • 5.4 Defining classes, variables and loading kernel modules
  • 5.5 Partitioning local disks, creating file systems
  • 5.6 Installing software packages
  • 5.7 Site specific configuration
  • 5.8 Save log files
  • 5.9 Reboot the new installed system
• 6 Plan your installation, and FAI installs your plans
• 7 Installation details
  • 7.1 The configuration space
  • 7.2 The default tasks
  • 7.3 The setup routines of the install clients
  • 7.4 The class concept
  • 7.5 Defining classes
  • 7.6 Defining variables
  • 7.7 Hard disk configuration
  • 7.8 Software package configuration
  • 7.9 Scripts in /fai/scripts
    • 7.9.1 Shell scripts
    • 7.9.2 Perl scripts
    • 7.9.3 Expect scripts
    • 7.9.4 Cfengine scripts
  • 7.10 Changing the boot device
  • 7.11 Hooks
  • 7.12 Looking for errors
• 8 How to build a Beowulf cluster using FAI
  • 8.1 Planning the Beowulf setup
  • 8.2 Set up the master server
    • 8.2.1 Set up the network
    • 8.2.2 Setting up NIS
    • 8.2.3 Create a local Debian mirror
    • 8.2.4 Install FAI package on the master server
    • 8.2.5 Prepare network booting
  • 8.3 Tools for Beowulf clusters
  • 8.4 Wake on LAN with 3Com network cards
• 9 FAI on other architectures and distributions
  • 9.1 FAI on AMD64
  • 9.2 FAI on PowerPC
  • 9.3 FAI on IA64
  • 9.4 FAI on Alpha
  • 9.5 FAI for Suse, Redhat and Gentoo
  • 9.6 FAI on SUN SPARC hardware running Linux
  • 9.7 FAI for Solaris
• 10 Advanced FAI
  • 10.1 Installing into a mounted directory for chroot and virtualization
  • 10.2 Using FAI for updates
    • 10.2.1 How does a softupdate work?
    • 10.2.2 How to run a softupdate
      • 10.2.2.1 How to do mass softupdates
    • 10.2.3 How to write a configuration suitable for softupdates
    • 10.2.4 What if there are locally changed conffiles?
      • 10.2.4.1 How to detect locally changed files?
• 11 Various hints
  • 11.1 Using FAI after an Installation with the Debian-Installer

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FAI Guide (Fully Automatic Installation)