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The following items are required for an installation via FAI.
The computer must have a network interface card. Unless a diskless installation should be performed a local hard disk is also needed. No floppy disk, CD-ROM, keyboard or graphic card is needed.
The clients need one of these daemons to obtain boot information. But you can also put all this information onto the boot floppy.
The TFTP daemon is used for transferring the kernel to the clients. It's only needed when booting from network card with a boot PROM.
It is a mountable directory which contains the whole filesystem for the install clients during installation. It will be created during the setup of the FAI package and is also called nfsroot.
Access to a Debian mirror is needed. A local mirror of all Debian packages or
an apt-proxy(8)
is recommended if you install several computers.
A kernel image that supports the network card and mounts its root filesystem
via NFS. The Debian package fai-kernels
provides a default kernel
for fai.
This directory tree which contains the configuration data is mounted via NFS by default. But you can also get this directory from a revision control system like CVS.
The TFTP daemon and an NFS server will be enabled automatically when installing the FAI package. All clients must have a network card which is recognized by the install kernel.
The script mkdebmirror
[3] can be used for creating your own local Debian mirror. This
script uses the script debmirror(1)
and rsync(1)
. A
partial Debian mirror only for i386 architecture for Debian 3.1 (aka sarge)
without the source packages needs about 9.0GB of disk space. Accessing the
mirror via NFS will be the normal and fastest way in most cases. To see more
output from the script call mkdebmirror --debug. A root account
is not necessary to create and maintain the Debian mirror.
You can use the command fai-mirror(1)
for creating a partial
mirror, that only contains the software packages that are used in the classes
in your configuration space. A partitial mirror containing all package for the
simplex examples from the package fai-doc will only need about 300MB of disk
space. To use HTTP access to the local Debian mirror, install a web server and
create a symlink to the local directory where your mirror is located:
# apt-get install apache2 # ln -s /files/scratch/debmirror /var/www/debmirror
Create a file sources.list(5)
in /etc/fai
which gives
access to your Debian mirror. An example can be found in
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc
. Also add the IP-address of the
HTTP server to the variable NFSROOT_ETC_HOSTS in
/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
when the install clients have no
DNS access.
To setup a FAI install server you need at least the packages fai-server, fai-doc, fai-kernels. The package fai-quickstart contains dependencies on all required packages for an install server. Do not install the package fai-nfsroot on a normals system. This package can only be installed inside the nfsroot. If you would like to install all packages that are useful for a fai install server, use the following command
# aptitude install fai-quickstart Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Reading task descriptions... Done The following NEW packages will be automatically installed: dhcp3-common dhcp3-server fai-client fai-doc fai-kernels fai-server tftp-hpa tftpd-hpa The following packages have been kept back: kernel-headers-2.6-686 The following NEW packages will be installed: dhcp3-common dhcp3-server fai-client fai-doc fai-kernels fai-quickstart fai-server tftp-hpa tftpd-hpa 0 packages upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. Need to get 13.0MB of archives. After unpacking 17.9MB will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
The suggested packages for FAI are: ssh, debmirror, mknbi, apt-move, mkinitrd-cd, grub.
The configuration for the FAI package (not the configuration data for the
install clients) is defined in /etc/fai/fai.conf
. Definitions
that are only used for creating the nfsroot are located in
/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
. Edit these files before calling
fai-setup
. These are important variables in
/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
:
For building the nfsroot there's the command called
debootstrap(8)
. It needs the location of a Debian mirror and the
name of the distribution (woody, sarge, sid) for which the basic Debian system
should be built.
If you use HTTP or FTP access to the Debain mirror, add its IP-address and the name to this variable. For a Beowulf master node, add the name and IP-address of both networks to it. This variable is not needed when the clients have access to a DNS server.
Now OPSOLETE and unsupported. Use the file /etc/fai/sources.list
instead.
You must specify the software package - built with make-kpkg(8)
-
which includes the default kernel for booting the install clients. The Debian
package fai-kernels
contains the default install kernels which
supports both the DHCP and BOOTP protocols.
This variable contains a list of additional software packages which will be added to the nfsroot.
which of DHCP and/or BOOTP the server should create setups for (when make-fai-nfsroot is run). The default is to create the setup for both protocols.
These are important variables in /etc/fai/fai.conf
:
This is the host name and the remote directory of the configuration space,
which will be mounted via NFS. Its default value is
/usr/local/share/fai
but some like to use
/home/fai/config
or /var/fai/config
. Remember that
this directory must be exported to all install clients, so that all files can
be read by root.
If you have NFS access to your local Debian mirror, specify the remote filesystem. It will be mounted to $MNTPOINT, which must also be defined. It's not needed if you use access via FTP or HTTP.
The content of /etc/fai/sources.list
and FAI_DEBMIRROR
are used by the install server and also by the clients. If your install server
has multiple network cards and different hostnames for each card (as for a
Beowulf server), use the install server name which is known by the install
clients.
FAI uses apt-get(8)
to create the nfsroot filesystem in
/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot
. It needs about 230MB of free disk space.
Before setting up FAI, you should get the program imggen
,[4] if you like to boot from a 3Com
network card. This executable converts netboot images created by
mknbi-linux(8)
, so they can be booted by network cards from 3Com.
Put that executable in your path (e.g. /usr/local/bin
). After
editing /etc/fai/fai.conf
and
/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
call fai-setup
.
faiserver[~]# fai-setup Creating FAI nfsroot can take a long time and will need more than 230MB disk space in /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot. Creating nfsroot for sarge using debootstrap dpkg: base-passwd: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you request: base-passwd depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4); however: Package libc6 is not installed. dpkg: base-files: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you request: . . . Creating base.tgz `/etc/fai/sources.list' -> `/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/apt/sources.list' Upgrading /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot Adding additional packages to /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot: fai-nfsroot module-init-tools dhcp3-client ssh rdate lshw hwinfo portmap bootpc rsync wget rsh-client less dump reiserfsprogs usbutils psmisc pciutils hdparm smartmontools parted mdadm lvm2 dnsutils ntpdate dosfstools cvs jove xfsprogs xfsdump sysutils dialog discover mdetect libnet-perl netcat libapt-pkg-perl grub lilo dmidecode hwtools read-edid Backing up any LVM2 metadata that may exist...done. Creating SSH2 RSA key; this may take some time ... Creating SSH2 DSA key; this may take some time ... Restarting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd. Checking available versions of rmt, updating links in /etc/alternatives ... (You may modify the symlinks there yourself if desired - see `man ln'.) Updating rmt (/usr/sbin/rmt) to point to /usr/sbin/rmt-dump. Updating rmt.8.gz (/usr/share/man/man8/rmt.8.gz) to point to /usr/share/man/man8/rmt-dump.8.gz. Recovering jove files ... Done. Error : Temporary failure in name resolution `/etc/fai/fai.conf' -> `/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/fai/fai.conf' `/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf' -> `/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf' `/etc/fai/menu.lst' -> `/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/fai/menu.lst' `/etc/fai/sources.list' -> `/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot/etc/fai/sources.list' Shadow passwords are now on. Kernel 2.6.16-fai-kernels installed into the nfsroot. DHCP environment prepared. If you want to use it, you have to enable the dhcpd and the tftp-hpa daemon. Image Creator for MBA ROMs v1.00 Usage: imggen [OPTION] inputfile outputfile -a, Add 3Com MBA/BootWare support -r, Remove 3Com MBA/BootWare support from image file -i, Show information on an image -h, Help screen In filename: /boot/fai/installimage Out filename: /boot/fai/installimage_3com Adding MBA support... MBA support has been succesfully added BOOTP environment prepared. Removing `diversion of /sbin/discover-modprobe to /sbin/discover-modprobe.distrib by fai' make-fai-nfsroot finished properly. <= * Adding line to /etc/exports: /usr/local/share/fai 123.45.6.0/24(async,ro) Adding line to /etc/exports: /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot 123.45.6.0/24(async,ro,no_root_squash) Re-exporting directories for NFS kernel daemon...done. You have no FAI configuration. Copy the simple examples with: cp -a /usr/share/doc/fai/examples/simple/* /usr/local/share/fai Then change the configuration files to meet your local needs. FAI setup finished. <= *
A complete log of fai-setup is available on the fai web page. It's important that you will see both lines that are marked with an asterisk. Otherwise something went wrong. If you'll get a lot of blank lines, it's likely that you are using konsole, the X terminal emulation for KDE which has a bug. Try again using xterm.
The warning messages from dpkg about dependency problems can be ignored. If
you have problems running fai-setup, they usually stem from
make-fai-nfsroot(8)
. You may restart it by calling
'make-fai-nfsroot -r' (recover). Adding '-v' gives you a more verbose output
which may help you pinpoint the error. If you want to create a log file you
may use
sudo /usr/sbin/make-fai-nfsroot -r -v 2>&1 | tee make-fai-nfsroot.log
It may help to enter the chroot environment manually
sudo chroot /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot
The setup routine adds some lines to /etc/exports
to export the
nfsroot and the configuration space to all hosts that belong to the netgroup
faiclients. If you already export a parent directory of these
directories, you may comment out these lines, since the kernel NFS server has
problems exporting a directory and one of its subdirectories with different
options. All install clients must belong to this netgroup, in order to mount
these directories successfully. Netgroups are defined in
/etc/netgroup
or in the corresponding NIS map. An example for the
netgroup file can be found in
/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/netgroup
. For more information,
read the manual pages netgroup(5)
and the NIS HOWTO. After
changing the netgroups, the NFS server has to reload its configuration. Use
one of the following commands, depending on which NFS server you are using:
kueppers# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server reload kueppers# /etc/init.d/nfs-user-server reload
The setup also creates the account fai (defined by
$LOGUSER) if not already available. So you can add a user before
calling fai-setup(8)
using the command adduser(8)
and
use this as your local account for saving log files. The log files of all
install clients are saved to the home directory of this account. If you boot
from network card, you should change the primary group of this account, so this
account has write permissions to /boot/fai
in order to change the
symbolic links to the kernel image which is booted by a client.
After that, FAI is installed successfully on your server, but has no configuration for the install clients. Start with the examples from /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple/ using the copy command above and read Installation details, Chapter 6. Before you can set up a DHCP or BOOTP daemon, you should collect some network information of all your install clients. This is described in section Creating a boot floppy, Section 3.3.
When you make changes to /etc/fai/fai.conf
,
/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
the nfsroot has to be rebuilt by
calling make-fai-nfsroot(8)
. If you only like to install a new
kernel to the nfsroot add the flags -k or -K to
make-fai-nfsroot. This will not recreate your nfsroot, but only
updates your kernel and kernel modules inside the nfsroot
The setup of FAI adds the FAI account, exports filesystems and calls
make-fai-nfsroot(8)
. If you call make-fai-nfsroot -v
you will see more messages. When using a local Debian mirror, it's important
that the install server can mount this directory via NFS. If this mount fails,
check /etc/exports
and /etc/netgroup
. An example can
be found in /usr/share/doc/fai/examples/etc/netgroup
.
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FAI Guide (Fully Automatic Installation)
FAI Guide version 2.5.4, 20 april 2006 for FAI package version 2.10.1lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de