Ubuntu 9.10 and FAI
- November 17th, 2009
- Posted in Linux Distributions . System Administration . Ubuntu
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thanks to Thomas Lange, Waldemar Brodkorb and friends, who were fixing
some major issues in the FAI sources to make FAI working on Ubuntu.
I incorporated the changes and prepared some Karmic packages for it.
I tested it on some vmware machines.
Results:
1. Installation of FAI on Ubuntu Karmic (server flavour): Success
2. make-fai-nfsroot: success (config changes reflecting e.g. ubuntu
mirrors are included)
3. Installation of a test client, especially testing grub-pc: Success
Anyone who is interested, to give FAI on Ubuntu Karmic a try, can fetch
the packages from the Launchpad FAI Team Personal Package Archive,
which you can find here:
https://launchpad.net/~fai/+archive/ppa
When you are running Ubuntu Karmic, just add ppa:fai/ppa to your
systems software sources or add a file to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ like
this:
fai-ubuntu.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fai/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/fai/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
The archive key is: 1024R/4EA8CBF6
The archive key fingerprint: 9129F9C36B552AE35EDE6F3E29B940FC4EA8CBF6
To add the archive key to your local apt-key ring:
sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys 4EA8CBF6
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fai-server fai-quickstart fai-doc
and you should be rock and rolling.
Interested people can also have a look at the source:
fai-ubuntu-trunk:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/fai/people/shermann/fai-ubuntu-trunk/#_people_shermann_fai-ubuntu-trunk_
fai-3.3.2ubuntu1:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/fai/people/shermann/fai-3.3.2ubuntu1/#_people_shermann_fai-3.3.2ubuntu1_
If you find any bugs, regarding this package, don’t file it in the
Debian BTS, but here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/~fai/
Wishlist bugs you can file always in the debian bts, or regarding
ubuntu only on launchpad (URL mentioned above).
Wishlist bugs which are filed on LP but could be useful for the FAI
main line, I’ll forward those towards the debian bts.
Mike, could you explain the magic a bit more?
linux-image was installed in my case but even if I manually installed grub-pc, I still get the grub prompt (and then I’m stuck).
>>and then ran the necessary grub commands to put my kernel into grub
This is the part where I got lost (I will dig into grub documentation but any help is appreciated).
shermann, I think I am using the latest FAI version with Ubuntu 9.10. Any update available to make the installation more seamless?
I’m not so far from my first FAI installation… :-)
Stephane.
What’s FAI ? Even their PPA can’t seem to provide a simple definition that includes what the acronym stands for.
Got it. http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
“Fully Automated Installation”
I always forget that there are people, who are not in extreme sysadmin automation business…
Any idea why I would get this message during NFSROOT creation?
ERROR: live-initramfs was not installed inside the nfsroot.
I never got this error while testing the software and especially make-fai-nfsroot -v
Could you add somewhere the output of make-fai-nfsroot and your /etc/fai/NFSROOT configuration?
If you like, please file a bug on launchpad, as described in the article.
Thx,
\sh
Yes, you need to include it into the /etc/fai/apt/sources.list.
But I can’t add as default in the package right now. Later on it will be included in the default ubuntu archives hopefully.
But good, that you fixed your problem :)
I am unable to get an installed client to boot properly using these FAI packages, specifically using the default bootloader class of “GRUB-PC”. After installation, I reboot, and the machine is left at the sh:grub boot prompt.
Is there something I need to do with the default config space to ensure proper booting with GRUB-PC, or should it be working “out of the box”?
FWIW, during and after install, I’m not able to switch to a terminal to look at /tmp/fai/* log files, and I also can’t ssh into it (Getting port 22: Connection refused) I wonder why? Have I not configured something correctly, or is this typical behavior? I was hoping to look at these logs to diagnose any install errors that might be leading to the GRUB issue above.
P.S. Thanks for your efforts in getting FAI and Ubuntu working. I think many people will benefit from this.
Disregard my comment above regarding ssh and the virtual terminal not working for me. PEBKAC. I wasn’t setting FAI_FLAGS=”verbose,sshd,createvt” in my PXE file.
I’ve installed over 600 clients using FAI with Debian. I should have known better. Honest mistake.
Looking at the fai.log file during install, it looks like something with setup_storage is failing, which might explain my grub issues…
Starting setup-storage 1.1.4
Using config file: /var/lib/fai/config/disk_config/FAIBASE
Executing: parted -s /dev/sda unit TiB print
Use of uninitialized value $fs in substitution (s///) at /usr/share/fai/setup-storage//Volumes.pm line 215.
So the reason for the machine not booting, was that no kernel “linux-image” was being installed. It wasn’t asked for in any package_config file, so I added it to package_config/DEFAULT.
Secondly, even though my machine is calling the GRUB-PC class, somehow it installed old GRUB (grub) and failed to install “grub-pc”. I’m sure I’ll figure this out once I have a moment to dig through the logs.
After install, and before rebooting, from the virtual terminal, I manually installed (using appropriate $ROOTCMD commands) linux-image, grub-pc, and then ran the necessary grub commands to put my kernel into grub, rebooted and voila, I’m up and running!
I’d be happy to contribute to making the default FAI config space provided in these packages working a bit better out of the box. Let me know where to sign up and if there’s any requirements for doing so. As I posted earlier, I have pretty extensive experience using FAI on Debian, and am eager to see it working with Ubuntu.
is, the kernel in the ubuntu package is installed via the CLASS "faiclient"…
This is one thing we need to change, I have to talk to Thomas Lange about it, to find a canonical solution for ubuntu and debian.
Regards,
\sh