Tips and tricks

User defined subroutines

If the pre-defined FAI subroutines don't fit or you need additional subroutines, place a file called 'subroutines' in your '$FAI/hooks' and it will be sourced by any installation.

To enable class specific subroutines, create a hook 'defvar.DEFAULT.source' with following content:

#! /bin/bash
for class in ${classes}
do
  [ -r ${FAI}/hooks/subroutines.${class} ] && \
  { echo "Reading subroutines.${class}." ; . ${FAI}/hooks/subroutines.${class} ; }
done
return 0

[jan 16:53, 24 Aug 2005 (CEST)]

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Fallback to local boot if no install needed

Rather than forcing a netboot when you want to install, you can run fai-chboot -o default once on the install server. If you have netboot as your first boot option, and local boot as second, your new server will check the fai server, if no install is required, it will boot up normally.

- Greenman (Thanks to MrFai on irc)

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Exim4 Ignores Debconf Settings

Exim4 maintains a kind of debconf cache in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf. When you use fai-debconf to set exim4 config settings that are held in this file, they will be ignored.

The simplest way around this issue is to remove this cache file before you install the debconf updates.