On Mon, 2013-12-23 at 16:49 -0500, George VerDuin wrote: > This note is a request for review to anyone with time and interest,
Some thoughts... I do not think it is a good idea to add FAI repositories to every host's APT configuration by default. One of the main advantages to using Debian is the stability of the "stable" distribution. The FAI included in the stable distribution is usually sufficient to install the same distribution on any hosts, and a newer version of FAI is rarely needed. When I have had the need to use a newer version of FAI, I put it in a local repository and point APT at that instead. This gives me consistency, stability, and control over the installed versions throughout the lifetime of the hosts. Also, addition of any external repositories to APT sources is prone to causing problems down the road. Through 15+ years of using Debian I have seen external repositories disappear, move, lose support for older versions of Debian, etc. I am not saying that any of this would happen to the FAI repositories, but we cannot exclude that either. As an example, only recently the project repositories were moved to the fai-project.org domain - a change which would require changing the fai-specific APT configuration file on all installed hosts. I have managed my sources.list files with cfengine for years without any adverse side effects. My APT's are pointed at my local apt-cacher anyway, and I also add a line pointing at a local APT repository. Using a configuration management system, rather than FAI, allows for easy centralized changes in the files, should such need arise in the future. Best regards, Toomas Tam
