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Hello and welcome to the FAI wiki.

This is a public wiki for FAI - Fully Automatic Installation. It is a place for users and developers of FAI to share information. If you have some information on FAI to share, see the page wiki registration - you need to write a mail, because we can't handle the spam otherwise. Also, please read editing rules.

About FAI

FAI is a tool for fully automatic (unless you explicitly wish to get some questions on each install) installation of Debian and other Linux Distributions via network, custom install cd, or into a chroot environment. Some people also use it to install Windows.

FAI works script-based as opposed to full image based (if you wish so, we can also install any kind of image) - so it is very flexible, and can be used to install very heterogeneous infrastructures. It uses a class-based system (think of classes as system types that can be combined with each other, as long as they are not technically conflicting) to define configurations in some simple textfiles.

It is also used to update running systems without completely reinstalling them with the softupdate functionality - so you have one single point of configuration for installation and updates.

Getting FAI

• download it from: http://fai-project.org/download/
• experimental builds contain patches contributed by the developers that may or may not make it into the official version
• check out the sources from subversion:

svn co svn://svn.debian.org/svn/fai/trunk fai-sources

• get the sources from the unofficial Git repository provided by Sebastian Harl:

git clone git://git.tokkee.org/fai.git
git clone http://git.tokkee.org/fai.git

(this repository is automatically synchronized from the SVN repository four times a day)

Documentation and examples

official - from the FAI developer team

• FAI guide
• Search the FAI guide
• Manpages in HTML Format

User contributed in this wiki

• Howtos (see also: Category:Howto)
• helper scripts - add-on scripts that help using FAI
• user FAQ (from questions in the mailing list and on IRC irc.debian.org #fai)
• linux-fai mailing list infos (Netiquette, how to subscribe and use)
• reporting bugs and also maybe find fixes for problems that you might encounter when using FAI.
• other installation tools - overview of other stuff seen in the wild web

FAI in the real world

• User reports by filling out the FAI questionnaire
• Success Stories - who is using FAI, how and why - and, when available pictures of the machines installed with FAI :)

"third party" articles

• a short tutorial on www.debian-administration.org
• a talk on fai and debian
• A visual overview of how all the pieces of an FAI installation fit together.
• Articles of how people use FAI for some clusters:
  • ATLAS Top 500 Cluster:
    • http://times.debian.net/#1250
    • http://fai-project.org/reports/index.html#atlas
    • http://www.top500.org/system/9234
  • Graphical rendering: http://viz.aset.psu.edu/ga5in/DisplayWallBuild.html
  • Global Optimization computing cluster: http://globopt.dsi.unifi.it/gol/cluster.html
• FAI Product Overview: http://highscalability.com/product-fai-fully-automatic-installation
• An Interview with Thomas: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6781458929811937223
• Rolling Out Unattended Debian Installations (Part 1): http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/5667/1/

Developer information

• Moved to Developers information

Wiki Information

• this wiki and FAI itself need a Logo
• About this Wiki - info on this wiki
• help for editing (mainly mediawiki documentation links)
• editing rules - some ideas that make collaborative work here easier
• practice wiki writing here
• FAI Wiki Administration Coordination - some infos on managing this wiki