Using FAI Framework for Automated Debian Install

Today i am going to introduce a different approach for a debian installation.

prerequesites:

dhcp does mean something to you
you know about networks
you know some about pc setups
you have at least once configured an nfs serverit would be good to know something about linux installationsso before you continue reading,

make sure you know these things, or start reading about them and try them out first.

lets assume you got a debian machine already running, and want to switch one or more machines on a lan to debian. either you may get yourself and your coworkers a set of debian installation cds, and start setting up each machine by hand, that will prolly take alot of time, even when you use the preconfig file system to have the installation questions automatically answered.there is a by far more elegant way to do this. all you need to do to get the fai system onto your main server, is the following:

# aptitude -r install fai fai-kernels
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:
binutils debootstrap dhcp3-server mtools nfs-kernel-server rsh-serversyslinux tftpd-hpa
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

just answer the question with Y and it will fetch the set of packages for you.

after he finishes, you have to do the following configuration steps:

first of all, edit the main config file to fit your needs, it may be found in

/etc/fai/

and is called fai.conf for a full list of parameters check the following distributor page:

http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/fai-guide.html/ch-inst.html#s-faisetup

the page also gives info on howto setup a local deb mirror, which might come in handy... i also suggest to read that page, in case your boxes are using 3com cards;)

The next step is to edit the file

/etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf

to point to the desired location of the nfsroot for your install. after you have finished the above steps, just run fai-setup the most important lines that the fai-setup is echoing are the following:

make-fai-nfsroot finished properly. <= *FAI setup finished. <= *

if one of them or both arent shown, something went wrong. next thing to do is to restart your nfs server, then your fai server should be ready. now we go on and create our client configs, examples may be found in

/usr/share/doc/fai/examples/simple/

a full list of possible options and possiblities for the client configurations may be found here:

http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/fai-guide.html/ch-config.html

there are three possible options on how to boot your clients into their setup:

network
floppy
cdrom

if possible, you might want to go for the first one, as it includes the smallest amount of time. there is one thing you might wanna take care about, your fai client user has to have write access to

/boot/fai

for more informations on booting the clients read the following part of the howto.

http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/fai-guide.html/ch-booting.html

under point 3.2 you will find the info for network booting. now all you need to do is to add the mac addy of your client to the fai servers dhcpd.conf, and youre set.

now just do a

fai-chboot -IFv demohost

as soon as the install finishes, you may login as your defined user or root user with the password fai. thats it.

note: the whole thing might sound complicated, but if you want to setup alot of clients, its gonna safe you alot of time.hope you enjoyed it as much as i did.

ps: its always wise to read the howto provided by the distributor, you might find alot more in depth information there, in case something doesnt work as planned.

Greets Oliver