Test setup

A nice test setup

This is how Mrfai does testing

• Set up a Debian mirror in your local LAN (using debmirror(1) and /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/utils/mkdebmirror)
• 2GB RAM for this mirror should be fine, GBit LAN is nice
• The host on which I run all tests has a quad-core Core i7-3770T, 2.5GHz, 32GB RAM, GBit LAN
• my /tmp entry in etc/fstab: tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=85%,mode=1777 0 0
• Set up a software bridge, so kvm can use a tap device (using the script fai-mk-network)
• Install fai packages, create the nfsroot
• Using fai-kvm you can boot a test client via PXE or from FAI CD

fai-kvm -n pxe

fai-kvm pxe

fai-kvm -n cd faicd64-small_5.4.iso

• Since a lot of things run in RAM this setup is very fast! A simple installation takes about 30 to 90 seconds.

Creating a FAI-CD ISO image

• Create a partitial mirror containing the packages needed (16s needed)

fai-mirror -m9999  -xXEN,I386,CHROOT,GRUB,GNOME,GERMAN /tmp/m1

• Create the ISO image (run this as root)

fai-cd -m /tmp/m1 /files/scratch/fai-cd.iso

• Run the CD in a VM

fai-kvm -n cd /files/scratch/fai-cd.iso