Main Page

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 functioanlity.

getting FAI

if you want the latest and greatest version(instead of the versions contained in Debian apt repositores for the specific version of the distribution):

• download it from: http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download/
• add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list, as well as /etc/fai/apt/sources.list(to get the correct fai-nfsroot package into the nfsroot) - depending on which flavor you want:

deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download sarge koeln
deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download etch koeln
deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download unstable koeln

• install it within debian sid
• check out the sources from subversion:

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

(will require building the package by entering the directory and do something like "dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot")

There are some hints for getting FAI 3.2.X running - there are changes in the boot setup, and the sources.list for server and fai must fit.

documentation and examples

official - from the FAI developer team

• Main documentation for FAI is the fai guide - it's available in multiple languages, but they are all outdated, except the english version.:
  • english
  • french
  • romanian
  • Search the fai guide
• [ http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/doc/man/ Manpages in HTML Format]
• FAI Homepage

user contributed in this wiki

• Howtos
• 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

• TODO:
  • Resources - there are some information resources about FAI available "out there", as well as some unofficial developer branches, that are handled somewhere else until that code is incoporated in the FAI main Branch - and we want to point to them.

FAI in the real world

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

"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://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/q-answers.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

• This has all been 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