FAI multi-distribution: Difference between revisions

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= Status =
== Status ==
Most of the stuff below "old stuff" here is outdated. FAI 3.1.8 already has the most important things integrated:


* unpacking a base.tgz named CLASS.tgz from the configspace
Support for Linux distributions other then Debian is available since 2011. FAI
* using other package managers (see install_packages or it's doc - I am not sure where and if there exists docs but the sources)
can install Linux distributions like Redhat, CentOS,
Scientific Linux Cern, Fedora, openSUSE, SuSE, Ubuntu and of course Debian.


There are some ubuntu classes here: http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/images/b/b1/Fai-configspace.tar.gz
Read the [https://lists.uni-koeln.de/pipermail/linux-fai/2011-September/009243.html announcement] including a small HowTo.


An there is a RHEL5 example configspace here: http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/fai/people/lazyboy/rhel-install-fixes_3.1.8/
=== Distribution specific stuff ===


= installing other distributions =
==== Ubuntu ====
Just get the basefile for Ubuntu from
https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/ and use the Ubuntu
examples from /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple.


A Quick overview(with Ubuntu as an example):


* build a minimal base image (here, the make-fai-base-tgz from  [http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/fai/people/lazyboy/fai-distributions/ svn://svn.debian.org/svn/fai/people/lazyboy/fai-distributions ] can help you, but is not required - you can build you base image as you wish) and put it into CLASSNAME.tgz in the configspace/basefiles
==== CentOS ====
* add the ubuntu host to the class CLASSNAME
FAI 4.0 includes examples for installing CentOS 5 and 6.
* check that the package lists of the classes of that host are ubuntu compatible
Ready-made basefiles are available at https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/.
* install as usual
Sample log files for a CentOS 6 installation can be found
[http://fai-project.org/logs/ here]


As we have not much feedback on this topic, which makes it hard to know if it works, or to make it better, please report success or failure of this methods on the FAI mailing lists!
==== Scientific Linux Cern ====
FAI 4.0 can also install SCL 5 and 6.
Ready-made basefiles are available at https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/.


a more verbose description on how to do this with SLES9 is [[Installing_SLES9_32Bit_and_Smart_PackageManager_with_FAI | available here]]
==== RHEL5 and 6 ====
Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6


This should work in the same way as CentOS and SLC.


= old stuff =
==== SuSE ====
This is the OUTDATED stuff - I only keep it until I know the thing ABOVE get people to a working cross-distribution install.
A more verbose description on how to do this with SLES9 is [[Installing_SLES9_32Bit_and_Smart_PackageManager_with_FAI | available here]]


It is possible to install other distributions than Debian and dpkg-based ones with FAI.
== Bootstrapping the base images for other distributions ==
There's an experimental release, which you can get with the apt sources.list line


<pre>  deb http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/download/fai-multi-distribution/debian/ experimental/ </pre>
Have a look at examples/simple/basefiles/mk-basefile. Works for
Ubuntu, CentOS, SLC. For RPM based distributions it uses [http://packages.qa.debian.org/r/rinse.html rinse], which
also support some old versions of OpenSUSE.


if you're brave. Try it and tell [[User:Lazyboy | me]] if it worked for you, or talk about it on the mailing list. You can help to improve it just by reporting things that don't work.
[[Category:RedHat]]
 
[[Category:CentOS]]
More info on the development of these features: [[Development_plan#fai-multi-distribution]]
[[Category:Ubuntu]]
 
The code should be fully compatible to FAI 2.9, you should be able to re-use your existing config space with no changes, just some additional classes
for the additional distribution, defining different packages and some different installation procedures. It only needs one nfsroot for all.
 
 
== requirements ==
* you should have a debian and ubuntu mirror on your mirrohost, otherwise additional script- or config-editing will be required.
* it can help if you had previous exposure to FAI, but is not necessarily much harder than get into FAI with Debian sarge only.
 
== usage ==
* install the deb's from the download location, including the package fai-distributions (look into it to see what it is about), after adding the apt line to your sources.list, just type
  apt-get update
  apt-get install fai-distributions fai-quickstart
* do everything you'd do with any other FAI install - read this wiki on how to do that.
* copy example classes as usual in FAI
* copy additional example classes:
  cp -a /usr/share/doc/fai-distributions/classes/*/* /usr/local/share/fai/
* there's some problem with non-executable hooks, do:
  chmod +x /usr/local/share/fai/hooks/*
* check configuration in
  /etc/fai-distributions/
* run
  mkdir /tmp/fai
  make-fai-nfsroot
* run
  sh /usr/lib/fai-distributions/ubuntu_hoary/make-base-tgz
( in lib because it should be called from make-fai-nfsroot)
* run /usr/lib/fai-distributions/ubuntu_breezy/make-base-tgz
* run /usr/lib/fai-distributions/mandriva/make-base-tgz (this currently just downloads a base system image. This task needs to be solved.
* name your install clients sarge, hoary, and breezy, or mandriva in DNS , or add them to the same classes as these example host configurations and install them as usual
* for mandriva, you need a mandriva mirror at the location specified in files/etc/apt/sources.list/MANDRIVA and in /etc/fai/distributions
* in general, check the config files in /etc/fai-distributions
* for mandriva, I have no network suppport in my tests, until I manually add the module for my card to the config - ubuntu and debian do that well
* also for mandriva, the X config isn't working
 
== missing features ==
* runs only on Debian sarge as server and is only tested on i386 architecture
* only network install is tested - cd install is some more work to do.
* not tested running on an Ubuntu server. also "normal" FAI has issues running on Ubuntu Linux.
* in general, FAI itself has not yet been proted to run on any other distribution.
 
== errata ==
* MANDRIVA: problem with grub menu.lst - you'll need a file files/boot/grub/menu.lst/HOSTNAME to get a proper menu.lst
* UBuntu HOARY: does only work with an ubuntu mirror on
  ftp://$mirrorhost/ubuntu
* Ubuntu hoary: does only work with modified instsoft.UBUNTU hook
* FAI 2.9 general: /etc/fai/sources.list must have an entry to a repository which has fai-nfsroot available
* /usr/local/share/fai/files/boot/grub/menu.lst/postinst seems to have a bug within the script. I had to change the line where the variable GROOT is defined to the following one (because a wrong path to device2grub was supplied)
GROOT=$(/usr/bin/device2grub $BOOT_PARTITION)
 
== subversion access ==
You can also get the latest subversion stuff by checking out
<pre>svn co svn://svn.debian.org/svn/fai/people/lazyboy/fai-distributions</pre>
and
<pre>svn co svn://svn.debian.org/svn/fai/people/lazyboy/fai-2.9-multidistribution</pre>
Then going into each of the two new directories and make dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot.

Latest revision as of 19:36, 10 March 2019

Status

Support for Linux distributions other then Debian is available since 2011. FAI can install Linux distributions like Redhat, CentOS, Scientific Linux Cern, Fedora, openSUSE, SuSE, Ubuntu and of course Debian.

Read the announcement including a small HowTo.

Distribution specific stuff

Ubuntu

Just get the basefile for Ubuntu from https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/ and use the Ubuntu examples from /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple.


CentOS

FAI 4.0 includes examples for installing CentOS 5 and 6. Ready-made basefiles are available at https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/. Sample log files for a CentOS 6 installation can be found here

Scientific Linux Cern

FAI 4.0 can also install SCL 5 and 6. Ready-made basefiles are available at https://fai-project.org/download/basefiles/.

RHEL5 and 6

Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6

This should work in the same way as CentOS and SLC.

SuSE

A more verbose description on how to do this with SLES9 is available here

Bootstrapping the base images for other distributions

Have a look at examples/simple/basefiles/mk-basefile. Works for Ubuntu, CentOS, SLC. For RPM based distributions it uses rinse, which also support some old versions of OpenSUSE.

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