FAI
FAI (fully automatic installation) is a non-interactive system to install a Debian GNU/Linux operating system on a group of PCs or a Linux cluster. After installation, the systems are fully configured and ready to run. It is a scalable method for performing unattended installation and updating. Changes to the configuration files of the operating system are made by cfengine, shell, and Perl scripts.
| Tags | Clustering/Distributed Networks Installation/Setup Systems Administration |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPL |
| Operating Systems | POSIX Linux |
| Implementation | Perl Unix Shell |
Recent releases
- 13 Feb 2003 12:21
Changes: There are many changes in the templates and example scripts. This release has kernel 2.4.20 support, uses a stand alone script for defining classes, and more.
- 19 Jul 2002 14:15
Changes: The default name for the FAI kernel-image package has changed to kernel-image-2.2.20_fai1_i386.deb, since the package fai-kernel >=1.4 contains install kernels which support both the BOOTP and DHCP protocol A wrong symlink for rcS_fai has been fixed. id_dsa* and id_rsa* files are copied in make-fai-nfsroot. use strict is enabled in the Perl scripts. "append ip=dhcp" has been added to pxelinux.cfg/default. There are minor changes in packages_config files. The setup_harddisks default filesystem type has changed from auto to ext2.
- 19 Oct 2001 09:34
Changes: Beowulf support was improved. The code was reorganized. Hook support and new classes were added.
- 08 Oct 2001 12:25
Changes: FAI_FLAGS can now be space or comma separated. They must be space-separated in bootptab. Use a comma to separate them as additional kernel parameters. bootp requests on multiple ethernet devices now show the device name. The all_hosts script no longer uses a hardcoded list of hosts. It now uses the netgroup allhosts.
- 14 Sep 2001 13:21
Changes: A new chapter and many examples and tools for Beowulf clusters, a script for software package updates after initial installation, reorganisation of the source code for more modularity and readability, hooks can skip the default task, and many more.
- All comments
Recent commentsFAI not what I had hoped
FAI is too bloody complicated man. I've spent two days on it with success in step by step trial and error, but what a waste of time. I could have had eight nodes up in my beowulf cluster by now, which is really all I need. FAI could use some serious improvement before laying claim to being "better than kickstart", which works great with minimal reading. Again, FAI was just a waste of time.