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FAI Guide (Fully Automatic Installation)
Chapter 10 - Advanced FAI


This chapter tells someabout how FAI can be used in bigger environments, this means both many administrators and many clients.


10.1 Using revision control for FAI configuration

If there is a team of administrators involved, a revision control/sourcecode management system like CVS can make coordination easier: many people can work on the configuration files simultaneously, while the system helps avoiding conflicts (and if they occur it helps resolving them). Another advantage lies in branching: while the administrator works out a new configuration and tries it out using a test system, other clients aren't disturbed in any way, because they use another branch of the configuration.


10.1.1 Setting up FAI for CVS based configuration

First you should setup a CVS repository and within it a module to store the FAI configuration files. In this example a cvs pserver will be used for read-only access to the configuration files by the clients, while ssh is used for the developers access (rw)[18].

The relevant variables in /etc/fai/fai.conf for CVS are:

FAI_LOCATION
This variable must not be set if you want to use CVS.
FAI_CVSROOT
contains the cvsroot where the configuration is stored.
         FAI_CVSROOT=":pserver:client@cvs.local.net:/var/lib/cvs"
FAI_CVSMODULE
contains the module in the cvsroot where the configuration is stored.
           FAI_CVSMODULE="config"
FAI_CVSTAG
contains the tag of the cvs branch to be checked out by the client[19].
           FAI_CVSTAG="STABLE"

If you use a cvs pserver for storing configuration files, the file /root/.cvspass has to exist and be valid in the nfsroot. CVS uses this file to get the password for the pserver. You can create it most easiely if you try

     cvs -d$FAI_CVSROOT login

and then copy the generated line from your ~/.cvspass into /root/.cvspass in the nfsroot.


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FAI Guide (Fully Automatic Installation)

Version 2.4.2, 17 feb 2004 for FAI version 2.5.3

Thomas Lange lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de