Hi Rob, > On 10/29/2010 03:31 AM, Michael Tautschnig wrote: > >>>What is the best way to make the basefile.tar.gz? Should we > >>>do a debootstrap and tar up the files before booting the > >>>bootstrapped system? > >>And, reading http://fai-project.org/fai-guide/ar01s07.html, I'm also > >>wondering where > >>I can put a hook in FAI to create the basefiles.tar.gz on a newly > >>bootstrapped > >>system which is being built by fai. > >> > >>It seems the hook would go right before the "configure" task. Correct? > > > >I don't really get why you would want to create the .tar.gz file *on* a > >bootstrapped system; as you said, you'd use debootstrap and tar up the files, > >which you could do on any system with debootstrap installed. Copy the .tar.gz > >into your config space (the basefiles/ directory) and be happy. > > Sorry, that did seem a little redundant. I was wondering if there > was anything done by FAI in addition to the debootstrap that might > give us a "better" basefile, especially if the target is a specific > hardware config on which many machines will be installed by FAI. >
The only thing that FAI/make-fai-nfsroot does is an rm of a few files; for full details please have a look at the create_base() function of make-fai-nfsroot. > Also I'm thinking of adding a switch (such as variable or class) > which would cause the basefile.tgz to be created (and possibly > transmitted back to the server via the logfile saving mechanism). > > Then we could easily flip the switch to generate an updated > basefile.tgz without the manual steps of running debootstrap/tar > outside of FAI. My experience has been that the basefile.tgz speeds > up the FAI install, but after a time, the basefile.tgz gets "stale" > and must be refreshed periodically as the packages become out of > date. > > I'm also thinking that possibly the basefiles.tgz could be built > later, after more packages are installed, which would make an even > faster FAI bootstrap install. Maybe this will work only if the > hardware is identical? > I was hoping that someone else with more experience of using different basefiles would reply - seems like nobody has done so thus far. basefiles in a way are like disk images: It makes installation really fast, but you'll have to update them regularly and system-specific stuff cannot be incorporated. I'd therefore guess, yess, that a larger basefile makes bootstrapping faster. Hope this helps, Michael
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