it is hard to say what you need to do without knowing specifically what
problems you are having. What you want to do probably isn't that
different than what we all have to deal with when upgrading our FAI
configuration for a new release of our chosen linux flavor. I'm
currently switching from Ubuntu zesty to artful and I need to make sure
that the zesty install keeps working while I build the artful configuration.
What I do is to create a class for the new configuration and put changes
in files named for that class. So for example, if artful requires some
changes to the contents of /etc/networking/interfaces, I create a file
named ARTFUL within the fai config for a new version of that file. This
is generally sufficient for all modifications. In fact, doing anything
more drastic, like making a copy of the entire config space, only makes
it harder to eventually integrate the changes into the production space.
So my first recommendation would be to try to use FAI's class feature to
do your experiments. But if you want to create a whole nother config
space, you can tell your FAI clients about it by setting the boot
parameter, FAI_CONFIG_SRC in the pxe boot config file. I manually
generate my own pxe boot config files instead of using fai-chboot. Just
never got the hang of it. So what I'd do if I wanted to experiment with
a whole nother config on a machine or two would be this:
1. Make a copy of the FAI config space. Say, from the default
/srv/fai/config/ to /opt/fai/config/.
2. Make whatever changes I needed to the files in /opt/fai/config/.
3. Create pxe boot config files for selected machines.
4. In the custom pxe boot file, change
FAI_CONFIG_SRC=nfs://faiserver/srv/fai/config to
FAI_CONFIG_SRC=nfs://faiserver/opt/fai/config.
It might not be obvious how to do step #3. When you pxe boot a
machine, it first asks the server for a machine matching it's own MAC
addres.s Then it asks for a file matching it's own IP address in
hexadecimal. Then it asks for a file matching the first 7 characters of
it's IP address. Then 6, etc. If you know the MAC or IP address of the
machines you are experimenting with, you create a file within your pxe
boot config space for those addresses. I am unclear on the format for
using MAC address but for IPV4 addresses, it's IP address quad format in
hexadecimal. So for example, if you want to make a custom pxe boot file
for a machine with the IPV4 address of 128.64.32.16, it would be
80402010. You can make a custom pxe boot file for any machine with an
IP address in the range, 128.64.32.0/24 by creating a file named 804020.
PS: You probably don't need to create a second nfsroot.
On 01/03/2018 09:53 AM, Itamar Gal wrote:
Dear FAI Users:
I'm running into various issues using FAI on a system (an FAI install
server) which is being managed by a couple of other system
administrators. I want to experiment with the configuration without
disturbing the production configuration.
My thought was to replicate the FAI configuration files inside of my
~/local directory and set the relevant FAI environment variables to
point to sub-directories of ~/local. Is there a way to do this safely?
If so, which variables do I need to set in my ~/local/etc/fai/fai.conf
file in order to be certain that I don't cause issues for anyone else?
There are a few FAI install clients that I have been given for this
purpose, so it's alright for me to overwrite the PXE files for those
specific hosts.
Cheers,
Itamar
