On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 22:21 +0200, Thomas Lange wrote: > First of all, I appreciate that you like to help. Please translate the > original english fai guide without any additions in the italian > version. I like to keep all translations in sync. So if you have any > improvements for the documentation, please send patches for the > english version before including them into a translated version. >
Whatever you read below, I just love FAI. It has simplified my work for about two years now, and I am really grateful for having it to lean on. :) I've been on the list for about a year and a half now, and I follow all discussions with interest. On to my original purpose: How does the list and the author feel about a complete remake of the FAI documentation? In my efforts to explain the usefulness and excellence of FAI to my fellow technicians, I have developed a document (currently only in .pdf-format) that includes examples and illustrations that they think simplified the understanding of FAI greatly. The people I work with have a long experience of the Microsoft (*ahem*) platform and have only basic knowledge of Linux, mostly as users. Personally, I think that the current FAI documentation is aimed at already committed Debian GNU/Linux administrators, but leaves a lot of catching up for those newly saved souls that decides to switch platform. As of now, configuring FAI to handle all installations in an entire network requires extensive knowledge in Debian GNU/Linux, user and server applications, scripting and FAI configuration. The learning curve for newcomers is steep and there is no single source of information to cover all aspects of the work necessary to achieve a fully automated installation structure (which is what we all want to have, right? :). The documentation of FAI is rudimentary in some areas and could be hard to grasp for a person newly introduced to Linux. It depends on several different sources to be complete, lack explanation of and references to certain key terms needed to further the understanding of FAI and the underlying structure. It also has no pictures to simplify complex textual explanations. The present documentation of FAI covers about sixty pages of written text. A single book describing a less advanced product like Microsoft RIS and MSI packaging never encompass less than 500 pages. Even though FAI for Debian GNU/Linux is a lot more flexible and configurable, the documentation only describes the default setup. The difference between FAI and any M$ solution is of course that There Is More Than One Way To Do It, and covering all possible solutions for all possible software packages would take a truckload of paper to print. My idea was to thouroghly and meticulously document the example classes simple, advanced and beowulf included in FAI, document all subroutines/tasks, helper scripts as ftar, install_packages, mkdebmirror, fai-divert and so on. I understand that this is a huge task to undertake, but it will hopefully save a lot of time for people on this list answering the same newbie questions over and over. :) There is of course nothing wrong with asking and answering basic questions multiple times. However, if this can be avoided by improving the FAI documentation, I think that it is a thing that should be done. I'm working on a synopsis for the documentation which I was thinking of publishing on this list if there is an interest for a revised documentation. Thomas and all involved in the development, thanks again for a great tool. :) Regards, Mathias
