Re: trying to load...
On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 02:07:38 +0200, Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Hi all, is it possible to say that he dont use the MAC Address for loading via tftp? I see an the boot screen of the clients: Trying to load: pxelinux.cfg/mac-address but i always had pxelinux.cfg/596A4804 Older versions of pxelinux.0 did not support loading by using the MAC address. So check the changelog of syslinux an use an older version of pxelinux.0. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI kernel won't boot on certain boxes
On Wed, 09 May 2007 18:12:43 +0200, Frank Doepper [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: But both, the out-of-the-box kernel and the self-compiled kernel, won't boot on a certain variant of transtec Intel Celeron PC. It says Loading vmlinuz-install..Ready. and dies. Mmm. Which variant? I only know of problems with some e1000 cards, where the fai kernels hangs when doing DHCP request. You can also use a stock Debian kernel with initrd. Have a look at http://www.uni-koeln.de/bin2/maillist/linux-fai/20070105.220333/174065 -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI kernel won't boot on certain boxes
On Wed, 09 May 2007 19:27:50 +0200, Frank Doepper [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: boot on a certain variant of transtec Intel Celeron PC. It says Loading vmlinuz-install..Ready. and dies. Just tried the fai-3.0-cd with linux-2.6.17, it works. Tried that kernel via netboot - it does not work! So I think it has to do rather with pxelinux than with the kernel. It is from recent syslinux version 1:3.31-4. The pxelinux.cfg entry is I have syslinux version 3.31-4 with the 1: in front. Yes, it could be the pxelinux loader. Try the old pxelinux.0 file from sarge. Maybe this version works with your hardware. Also try to do a memtest. Maybe defect RAM. -- regards Thomas
Re: X7DBR woes, was Re: FAI kernel won't boot on certain boxes
On Thu, 10 May 2007 09:01:58 +0200, Steffen Grunewald [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: If I try to FAI install, I get MD5sum errors from random packages. Are you using NFS over UDP? Try NFS over TCP. Is there an archive of old FAI kernels, and which e1000 drivers do these see http://snapshot.debian.net/ fai-kernels 1.12 is available from http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download/sarge/ Did you try to use the stock Debian kernel with an initrd for booting FAI? -- regards Thomas
Re: cfagent didn't copy with FAI
On Mon, 21 May 2007 18:39:25 +0200, Andy Van Maele [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: But now, when performing an installation, for a strange reason cfagent just ignores the copy section. When I stopped the FAI install just Mmm. The best would be to come into IRC #fai on oftc and we will try to solve the problem online. Did you use cfengine 1 or 2 with sarge? Any error/log messages? Would anyone have a hint why the manually executed cfagent file does work, and it doesn't when processing it through the FAI install? Maybe a class is not defined. Try to put this code into the any:: section of cfagent. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI problem in 'fstab' after setup
On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:07:04 +0200, Vincent Batoufflet [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I'm experiencing some problems with my fai setup. After rebooting on my newly installed system, I have a failed error in my console. Yep, this is a minor error in setup_harddisks. But it works, only the error message is unaesthetic. This bug will be fixed in the next version. In order to correct this problem, I had to change in '/etc/fstab': none/proc procrw,nosuid,noexec0 0 to: proc/proc procrw,nosuid,noexec0 0 I know that workaround. But thanks again. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI for other distributions
On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:52:14 +0200, Jens Strohschnitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: my experience with FAI and SuSE were so awfull, so that we only use FAI with Debian :-( Because of Suse itself or the combination FAI and Suse? What ist not working? -- regards Thomas
Re: mixing architectures with debootstrap
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 12:33:41 -0500, John Heim [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: So, if make-fai-nfsroot is supposed to create the nfsroot in /sur/share/fai/nfsroot, I can just issue my own debootstrap command to create an root directory there? make-fai-nfsroot does much more than just calling debootstrap. So it will not work if you just install the kernel into the nfsroot. -- regards Thomas
Re: BIOS
On Thu, 9 Aug 2007 11:03:10 +0200, Steffen Grunewald [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: That's the problem: to get a reasonable message *somewhere* you'd need a TCP/IP stack. Or am I missing something? No, you are right. TCP/IP is needed. -- regards Thomas
Re: fai-setup fails : chroot pb
On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:35:48 +0200 (CEST), Jean-Paul BALOCHE [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: FAIDEB40:/srv/fai# fai-setup -vv Account $LOGUSER=fai already exists. Make sure that all install clients can log into this account without a password. /var/log/fai/.ssh/known_hosts remained unchanged. /var/log/fai/.ssh/authorized_keys created. User account fai set up. Using configuration files from /etc/fai Creating FAI nfsroot in /srv/fai/nfsroot. By default it needs more than 250 MBytes disk space. This may take a long time. /srv/fai/nfsroot already exists. Removing /srv/fai/nfsroot Creating base system using debootstrap version 0.3.3.2 Calling debootstrap etch /srv/fai/nfsroot http://192.168.1.203/debmirror/debian I: Retrieving Release I: Retrieving Packages I: Retrieving Packages I: Resolving dependencies of required packages... I: Resolving dependencies of base packages... W: Failure trying to run: chroot /srv/fai/nfsroot mount -t proc proc /proc Aborting I think your local mirror is broken. Please try again using an official mirror. -- regards Thomas
Re: No kernel installed with amd64 setup
On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:18:29 +0200, Vincent Batoufflet [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I have a problem with my FAI setup. My FAI server is an i386 system and provide setup for both i386 and amd64 systems. My amd64 nfsroot was created on a amd64 system an copied on the server. FAI works fine with i386 setups. But with amd64 I have an error in my /var/log/fai/current/error.log at the end of the FAI setup. shell.log:ERROR: No kernel was installed. Have a look at shell.log software.log:Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched linux-image-486 Have a look at software.log and check if your client really belongs to the class AMD64 and not to I386. -- regards Thomas
Re: No kernel installed with amd64 setup
On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:56:00 +0200, Vincent Batoufflet [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: The only noticeable error I have found in 'software.log' is: Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched linux-image-486, the one reported in 'shell.log'. In my /var/log/fai/current/FAI_CLASSES I have: DEFAULT LINUX AMD64 FAIBASE DHCPC GRUB work118 LAST Salut Vincent, this looks very good. Is your sources.list for the client OK? Please check using the command file /tmp/target/sbin/ifconfig (during installation) if you are really installing 64bit packages or maybe only 32bit. If you join the IRC chnnel #fai on irc.debian.org I can help you much quicker, you can then also post more logs to paste.debian.net. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2 released
Hi all, the new FAI version 3.2 is now available. A total of 45 bugs were closed! This is a new record. 12 new options were added to commands and also some new features. The major change is, that the now the plain Debian kernel and an inital ramdisk is used to boot the FAI system. Here are other news - FAI uses live-initramfs for booting, the whole nfsroot is now writeable for the clients (by using unionfs) - fai-cd can create bootable USB sticks - major update to the fai guide - scp/ssh are now the default methods instead of rcp/rsh when contacting the install server - faimond can now call fai-chboot (instead of rsh/ssh call) - fai-savelog uses $LOGREMOTEDIR - Task extrbase can also extract files from directory ../basefiles/ - /tmp/target is now /target FAI 3.2 is tested with Debian 4.0 aka etch, and can be downloaded if you add following line to sources.list: deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download etch koeln A new fai-cd ISO image for i386 will be created in the next days. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI 3.2 released
On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:04:52 +0200 (CEST), Per Foreby [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Will softupdate work if a use fai-client 3.2 against a 3.1.8 server? I'm not sure, but I guess it should work. What happens to the small boot cd (make-fai-bootfloppy -B -i ...). Is that option still available now that fai uses initramfs? It's still available and was not modified, so it does not support the initrd. (I use that method for older PXE bios versions that don't honour next-server.) You can create a fai-cd that only includes the kernel and initrd and modify the grub menu, to get the nfsroot via NFS. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI 3.2 released
On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:23:37 +0200 (CEST), Per Foreby [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: But make-fai-bootfloppy uses $NFSROOT/boot/vnlinu?-*. If that is a standard debian kernel it won't work without initramfs. Yes, and both won't fit onto a 1.4M floppy. You can create a fai-cd that only includes the kernel and initrd and modify the grub menu, to get the nfsroot via NFS. Do you meen that I should use -g to supply a menu.lst like the one make-fai-boot creates, and then use -m /empty/dir? Yes, give it a try. It will also put the config space and the nfsroot into this image. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI 3.2 released
On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:41:17 +0200 (CEST), Per Foreby [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Having the config space and the nfsroot on the CD is no problem as long as it isn't used. But if I use this in menu.lst: ... root=/dev/nfs ip=::dhcp FAI_ACTION=install FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd together with my current dhcp configuration: option root-path /srv/fai/nfsroot,rsize=8192,...; or maybe use nfsroot as a kernel parameter, the configuration on the CD should be ignored. Yep. You can also add this: ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/srv/fai/nfsroot Then root-path is not needed in dhcpd.conf. By the way, why does burniso() in fai-cd use cdrecord? Shouldn't it be wodim these days? As long as cdrecord is a link to wodim, I prefer to call cdrecord, since more people know what this program will do. -- regards Thomas
long-time missing FAI questionnaire finally added
Hi, a new FAI questionnaire which was missing since the very beginning of FAI was now filled out and added to http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/q-answers.html#mrfai It may be interesting for you. -- regards Thomas
Re: use of aptitude instead of apt-get in FAI ?
On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:31:36 +0200, Frédéric BOITEUX [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I would like to use aptitude instead of apt-get during FAI packages installation (to have packages dependencies knowledge) : is it possible ? Yes. In FAI 3.2 install_packages -h will give you a list of all possible commands, that can be used after the PACKAGES keyword. For aptitude just write: PACKAGES aptitude But even apt-get will resolv package dependencies. -- regards Thomas
Re: strange /proc mount definition in fstab...
On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:51:12 +0200, Frédéric BOITEUX [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Using FAI 3.1.8 (from Etch) to install some HP servers, I get a strange /proc definition in /etc/fstab : none /proc procrw,nosuid,noexec 00 The rw,nosuid,noexec options cause /etc/init.d/mountall.sh to give a 'failed' status at boot... Is it correct ? The red failed message during boot is caused by the string none. FAI 3.2 now uses proc instead of none. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI Setup on Ubuntu / RedHat 6 / 5
On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 05:36:27 -0700 (PDT), Taurai Allen Mhokore [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Could you please furnish me with the procedure and commands to create a FAI-CD which I can used to deploy installation on boxes easily. Taurai Mhokore After setting up the fai install server and editinig your config space, call fai-mirror, then call fai-cd. Man pages are available for both commands. fai-mirror will not work with redhat, since I do not know how to download only the pacakges without installing them. This is needed for fai-mirror. -- regards Thomas
RE: Errors while running fai-setup
On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:15:32 +0800, Muniven Shekar-PTH473 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: In fai-cd version=fai-cd 2.4.3, 6 october 2006 the initrd image was creared using the function create_initrd_image() as shown below. But in new fai-cd version=fai-cd 3.2, 5 august 2007 its not there . The question is how is initrd.img and vmlinuz are being created in the $NFS root/boot/ in the new fai-cd v 3.2? The new fai-cd script uses the live-initramfs package which uses the initramfs-tools for creating the initrd. -- regards Thomas
Re: Multiple rootfs's in single server?
On Tue, 4 Sep 2007 16:23:25 +0300, Kaj Wiik [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: We have a mixture of AMD64 and i386 ubuntu workstations and I'd like to upgrade/install them using FAI. Is it possible to have multiple rootfs in a single server? Yes. Have a look at the FAI wiki http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/FAI_How_to_build_a_i386_and_x86_64_compatible_FAI_server_on_Debian_Etch_x86_64 -- regards Thomas
Re: further problems with make-fai-nfsroot
On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:43:43 +0200, Tobias Herziger [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I just put thomas' debian repository into our sources.list apt-get upgraded the packages and now FAI is broken. running make-fai-nfsroot leads to that: cp: Fehlender Zieldatei-Operand hinter þ/srv/fai/nfsroot/live/filesystem.dir/boot/vmlinuz-*ü It seems that no kernel package was installed into the nfsroot. Which FAI version were you using before adding my repository? In my repository there is FAI 3.2 which has some major changes to FAI 3.1.8. -- regards Thomas
Re: error while running fai-setup for ubuntu-edgy
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:25:04 +0800, Muniven Shekar-PTH473 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: some errors when I run the fai-setup -v. Pls find the output below.. Ign http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de etch Release.gpg Get:7 http://security.ubuntu.com edgy-security/multiverse Packages [3796B] Ign http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de etch Release Ign http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de etch/koeln Packages Hit http://mirrors.kernel.org edgy/main Packages Get:8 http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de etch/koeln Packages [4951B] Fetched 225kB in 1s (112kB/s) This looks good. The following packages have unmet dependencies: fai-nfsroot: Depends: fai-client but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages I'm wondering why in can;t find fai-client. Maybe chroot into your nfsroot and try to install fai-nfsroot manually to see a more detailed error. BTW, which FAI version? I just uploaded FAI 3.2.1. yesterday, maybe you called this command during my upload. -- regards Thomas
RE: error while running fai-setup for ubuntu-edgy
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:25:41 +0800, Muniven Shekar-PTH473 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I did it an hour back. I am using 3.2. I will try installing fai-nfsroot manually. Shall I use 3.2.1? Yep. That's the problem maybe. The fai-client 3.2 version is not available any more. Now only FAI 3.2.1 is available from my local repository. Ign http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de etch Release Ign http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de etch/koeln Packages Does Ign means ignore? Is there some issue here, or is it OK? Maybe a problem. I'm not sure. -- regards Thomas
RE: error while running fai-setup for ubuntu-edgy
On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:20:23 +0800, Muniven Shekar-PTH473 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off (initramfs) --- read live.log. Maybe the hardware was not detected correctly. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems to boot the FAI client
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:44:37 +0200, Steffen Bornemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: When I upgraded FAI, I do obtain my old config files and do not use the new 'distributed' config files. Could it be, that I forgot an adjustment for the new FAI version? Yep. Sure! You should diff your old config file with the new ones and see what has changed. A lot, since it seems that your old version was FAI 2.X and now it's 3.X. Also read this one: http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/NEWS -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI kernel config
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:17:20 -0500, John Heim [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: So I would like to convert the grml config file to one that will work for the FAI boot CD. CAn anyone tell me how to do that? Did you test the new fai-cd iso image? (http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/fai-cd/fai-cd-3.2.iso) I this CD work, you can just use the default Debian kernel and do not need to build your own. -- regards Thomas
Re: cp: missing destination file operand
On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:58:19 +0200, Viktor Keil [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Unter Debian etch mit Kernel 2.6.18-5-686 habe ich folgende Pakete installiert: fai-client, fai-server, fai-doc, fai-kernels, fai-quickstart FAI-Version 3.2.1 fai-kernels wird bei FAI 3.2.1 nicht mehr benutzt, es existiert auch gar nicht mehr. DNS-Server ist verfügbar. Entsprechend /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/fai-guide.txt habe ich Beispieldateien kopiert: cp -a /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple/* /fai/config/ Das sollte sr/c/fai/config per default sein. Danach habe ich fai-setup gestartet. noch Dokumentation, noch die Ausgabe von fai-setup -v zur Erkenntnis geführt. Irgend etwas muss ich übersehen haben, nur was? paste doch mal den ganzen output nach paste.debian.net FAI_CONFIG_SRC=nfs://$installserver$FAI_CONFIGDIR Das ist falsch. $installserver wrid schon seit laengerem nicht mehr update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-5-486 cp: missing destination file operand after `/fai/nfsroot/live/filesystem.dir/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-486' Try `cp --help' for more information. Ich glaub das hatten wir schon mal im IRC. Check mal dein /etc/fai/apt/sources.list. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems installing a client
On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:46:21 +0200, Bernhard Glomm [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: After some tuning (installing libapt-pkg-perl and cdrecord manually) I tried to make a boot-cd - which didn't worked... You are using the package boot-cd? That is not used by FAI. So booting may not work when using it. after manually installing fai-kernels into the nfsroot fai-kernels is obsolete now. Do not use it with newer FAI versions! Any clues why the client can't create it's temp dirs/files? Because you are not using unionfs IMO. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems installing a client
On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:26:56 +0200, Bernhard Glomm [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: You are using the package boot-cd? No, I just created a bootable CD instead of a bootfloppy with make-fai-bootfloppy... Oh, this is not tested using the new plain kernel with initrd. Maybe the initrd is missing on your CD. ??? Than make-fai-bootcd take the 2.6.18-5-486 kernel There's no make-fai-bootcd. What do you mean? How do I get unionfs to work than? Use fai-cd to create a working fai-cd. But this will also include the nfsroot. P.S.: make-fai-bootfloppy also still usese $NFSROOT so I had to patch it with NFSROOT=$NFSROOT/live/filesystem.dir to make it work... Feel free to submit a bug report for this. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problem with debconf preseed and nvidia
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:58:38 +0100, Sjors Robroek [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Debconf does not seem to recognize my videocard automatically, so i tried configuring it with the standard debconf preseed file. Contents of this is as follows: xserver-xorgxserver-xorg/autodetect_video_card boolean false xserver-xorgxserver-xorg/config/device/driver select nvidia xserver-xorgxserver-xorg/config/device/identifier string nVidia Is there a way to either force debconf to set driver to nvidia wether or not it exists, or to make sure nvidia-glx is installed before xserver-xorg is configured? You can call fai-debconf and then $ROOTCMD dexconf at the end of installation (in a shell script). This should generate a proper xorg.conf file. -- regards Thomas
Re: Ubuntu 7.10 - live/filesystem.dir and read only filesystem
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:51:15 +0100, Castang Jerome [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: (the live-initramfs package is installed on the server) You need live-initramfs only inside the nfsroot, not on the server itself. -- regards Thomas
Re: configuration to boot from network card
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 14:22:20 +0100, Steffen Grunewald [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: ii fai-kernels 1.17+etch5 special kernels for FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) ii fai-server3.2.1 You must not use fai-kernels with fai 3.2.1! Shouldn't there be a Conflict: then? I just aded this to the svn trunk :-) -- regards Thomas
fai-cd ISO image for amd64, FAI 3.2
The fai-cd for amd64 built with FAI 3.2 is now available at http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/fai-cd -- regards Thomas
Ubuntu installtion using seperate /var partition, no network running
If you are doing an Ubuntu installation with FAI, you may have problems with your network. Ubuntu does not like if you use a separate /var partition. Read more here http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/UbuntuVarRun -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI problem with lenny
On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:05:09 +0100, Lars Baumung [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: does anybody succesfully installed lenny on fai clients? I got the following problem with it: the fai-server runs lenny and contains a local deb mirror, dhcp- and tftp-server, after first running the 'fai-setup' I got error message about not finding the 'unionfs-modules'-package, because in lenny Add this line to /etc/fai/apt/sources.list deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download etch koeln BTW, FAI 3.2.2 will be released very soon. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2.2 released
A new version of FAI is now released. The most important changes are: - LOGDIR is now /var/log/fai/$HOSTNAME/$FAI_ACTION_date+time - LOGDIR is /tmp/fai during an installation (not dirinstall), and will be copied to the path above at the end of an installation - fai-setup new option -C - new variable $STOP_ON_ERROR, determines when to stop the installation - /etc/fai/apt/sources.list now also contain an entry for the koeln repository I also fix a number of bugs as usual. -- regards Thomas
Problems booting FAI from network, problems mounting nfsroot
This mail explains some common problems with FAI =3.2 which uses a kernel with initrd and how to fix them. - I you have problems booting FAI via kernel and initrd and mounting the nfsroot over NFS. Sometimes you even see the mount request on the NFS server. - If you boot from fai-cd but do not use the nfsroot from CD but using root=/dev/nfs and ip=dhcp - If you boot via PXE but did not create the pxelinux/cfg by using the command fai-chboot - When (or after) trying to mount the nfsroot you see: short read 028. And the initrd tries to mount again and again Read the messages on the console which scripts are executed. This is WRONG: Begin: Mounting root file system... Begin: Running /scripts/nfs-top Instead, you should see this: Begin: Mounting root file system... Begin: Running /scripts/live-premount You should not see scripts with name nfs-* get executed, instead the live-* script should be executed. Check the parameters that you've appended to the kernel: Example (wrong): kernel /boot/vmlinuz boot=live FAI_FLAGS=verbose,createvt FAI_ACTION=sysinfo ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/srv/fai/nfsroot Example (correct): kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/nfs boot=live FAI_FLAGS=verbose,createvt FAI_ACTION=sysinfo ip=dhcp nfsroot=/srv/fai/nfsroot The order of the boot= and root= parameters are important, because root=/dev/nfs also sets boot=nfs and so a previous boot=live definition will be overwritten and the wrong script are executed. This bug is present in the combination of initramfs-tool 0.85h and live-initramfs 1.110.7~200711. BTW: You can debug problems inside the initrd, when you boot your kernel and initrd and append break=mount as kernel parameter. Then you will get the shell from initramfs before it tries to do the nfs mount. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems booting FAI from network, problems mounting nfsroot
This is the bug report concerning the last post. http://bugs.debian.org/453294 -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems booting FAI from network, problems mounting nfsroot
On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:44:23 +0100, Holger Levsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Wednesday 28 November 2007 12:46, Thomas Lange wrote: This mail explains some common problems with FAI =3.2 which uses a kernel with initrd and how to fix them. Shouldnt this be copied into the guide into a troubleshooting section? No. The maintainer of initramfs-tools already fixed the problem in the new version of his package. -- regards Thomas
Re: Installing ruby gems
On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:23:12 +0100, Ulrich Kortenkamp [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: we have a working fai installation here Did I already get your FAI questionnaire? ;-) http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/questionnaire and I would like to install Ruby on Rails on the fai clients. It's no problem to add the ruby packages, but in order to install rails I have to use the ruby package management tool gems. I thought that adding a script that calls gem install --include-dependencies rails Yuo have to call this command inside the new system (using chroot), which is mounted to /target during installation. Try this $ROOTCMD gem install --include-dependencies rails $ROOTCMD will do the chroot /target for you, or during a softupdate it's just empty. -- regards Thomas
Re: another lenny problem
On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 16:53:36 +0100, Lars Baumung [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: as i wrote in an older e-mail i'm running a fai-server 3.2.4 on a lenny machine with tftpd and dhcpd and try to install lenny on the clients as well. The clients are doing a succesful pxe-boot, starting the kernel image (2.6.22-3-486), bringing up eth0 again but then runing into a kernel panic during nfs_lookup calls (i have no problems to mount the nfs exports from other machines). To check if this is a lenny problem or a general config problem on your side, try to use an etch nfsroot for booting. If this works, the problems are lenny related. Please check it using an etch nfsroot. -- regards Thomas
Re: problem with nfs root mount in fai kernel
On Fri, 4 Jan 2008 20:06:19 +0100, Grzegorz Marsza³ek [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I've have problem with booting fai throug network. Kernel and initrd is loaded, network card is detected, but there is problem with mounting nfs root. I receive message: mount: Device or resource busy short read: 0 28 Read https://lists.uni-koeln.de/pipermail/linux-fai/2007-November/005547.html -- regards Thomas
Re: Newbie with fai-setup troubles
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:06:59 +, Javi Legido [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: 2. fai-setup -v Temporary failure resolving 'ftp.debian.org' Temporary failure resolving 'www.informatik.uni-koeln.de' This seems to be the problem. Fix your DNS problems. `/etc/resolv.conf' - `/srv/fai/nfsroot/live/filesystem.dir/etc/resolv.conf' FAI is also using your resolv.conf inside the nfsroot. That's needed by default, but it seems that it does not work in your environment. Maybe it helps setting some HTTP_PROXY variable or similar. -- regards Thomas
Re: Trouble with a Bladecenter
On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:17:38 +0100, Philipp Grau [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: The BL460c blades have two network interfaces, But even disabling one of them int server's BIOS Can you disable the other one in the BIOS? - Is there a way to get more verbose output from the kernel what he is trying to mount? add debug to the kernel append line. - Are there other ways to debug the problem? Check the mount request as Tim suggests. ip=::eth1:dhcp should also work, IMO you do not need to supply all network parameters. But check the number of colons. -- regards Thomas
Re: Trouble with a Bladecenter
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:23:34 +0100, Maximilian Wilhelm [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I never had problems with getting FAI running on our 1955 Dell blades. Which FAI version are you using? Which kernel version? -- regards Thomas
Re: Fai with extra Attansic L2 ethernet driver
On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:23:11 +0100, zamek [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Unfortunately I cannot compile attansic driver statically, only module can be load. My question is that: How can I load atl2 module at booting kernel? I think you can tell the initramfs tools to load this module. See: man initramfs.conf for how to define certain modules to be loaded. -- regards Thomas
Re: Kernel problems with unionfs and Ubuntu gutsy
On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:42:45 +, R. F. Grant [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Anyway, I finally managed to build a kernel that would boot the new hardware. It would be nice to put the packages containing the kernel and unionfs modules on the web (maybe the FAI web pages), so people can also use it. Do you have normal kernel packages build by make-kpkg? -- regards Thomas
grml live CD is using FAI for build process
Hi folks, the new version of grml (1.1) is now using FAI for their new build-framework. Using FAI's action dirinstall and their own FAI classes, they can now build the grml ISO images fully automatically. grml is a bootable CD (Live-CD) based on Debian and includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system administrators and users of texttools. Read more about the new grml version at mikas blog: http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2008/02/26/linux-live-cd-grml-11-codename-skunk/ Thanks to mika for testing FAI's action dirinstall and all the bug reports and patches. -- regards Thomas
Re: dpkg error
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:17:30 +0100, Viktor Keil [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Selecting previously deselected package linux-image-2.6.18-6-686. Unpacking linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 (from .../linux-image-2.6.18-6-686_2.6.18.dfsg.1-18etch1_i386.deb) ... Vielleicht eine volle partition? Was sagt df? -- regards Thomas
Re: task_chboot: SERVER not defined
On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:02:42 +0100, Viktor Keil [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: SERVER not defined. Can't change network boot configuration Die Variable $SERVER ist nicht definiert. Schau mal ins variables.log Die Erläuterung in Abschnitt 7.2 unter chboot verstehe ich leider inhaltlich nicht. Damit man nicht nachschlagen muss, zitiere ich kurz: chboot Changes the symbolic link on the install server which indicates which kernel Symbolic links wurden frueher erzeugt. Da ist die Doku also nicht mehr up-to-date. Jetzt wird fai-chboot -d aufgerufen um die pxe config zu disablen. -- regards Thomas
Re: How to encrypt password
On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 14:54:49 +0200, Walter den Besten [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: In the examples for FAI, the password for root is setup as fai. I want to use the same way to define a password for an other local user which should exist on all our servers. However, I can't find the way to translate fai to something like $1$kBnWcO.E$djxB128U7dMkrltJHPf6d1 Could someone tell me how? echo yoursecrectpassword | mkpasswd -Hmd5 -s -- regards Thomas
Re: Creating local mirror
On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 13:05:10 +0200, Walter den Besten [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: For creating a local mirror, I found the script mkdebmirror. In this script, an rsync to debian/dists/etch/main/disks-i386 (or disks-amd86) is done. This is already commented out in newer versions of the script. IIRC, this directory does not exists after sarge, so not need to rsync it for etch or after. -- regards Thomas
Re: fai-cd: Is there a cache ?
On Wed, 07 May 2008 14:09:06 +0200, TOUZEAU DAVID [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I have put some files in config/files/ directory in order to install them during CD installation. ex: /config/files/home/mydir/file.tar.gz/DEFAULT /config/files/home/mydir/file2.tar.gz/DEFAULT sometimes i need to make updates of this files i replace them in the same folder /config/files/home/mydir/file2.tar.gz in each time i update files, i launch fai-cd -m /home/mirror -f -v /home/myiso.iso but i don't understand why after installing the system, files updates inside config/files directories are not updated. Is there a cache created ? No, there's no cache. The config space which will be put on the CD it taken from FAI_CONFIGDIR. Which version of fai-cd re you using? Did you specify -C? There was a bug closed recently which may be related to your problem. bug nr.: #475250 If not, please proved some output of your fai-cd run. You should see a message like this in it: Config space /etc/fai mounted -- regards Thomas
Re: fai-cd: Is there a cache ?
On Wed, 07 May 2008 14:43:57 +0200, TOUZEAU DAVID [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: The fai-cd version is fai-cd 3.3 OK, this is a new version. FAI_CONFIGDIR=/srv/fai/config Fine. here it is the ouptout: debian4r1:~# fai-cd -m /home/mirror -f /home/artica-1.1.050713.iso Bind mounting all required parts NFSROOT /srv/fai/nfsroot/live/filesystem.dir mounted Config space /srv/fai/config mounted Good. Did you copy your new files into this location? Mirror /home/mirror mounted Writing FAI CD-ROM image to /home/artica-1.1.050713.iso. This may need some time. re-directing all messages to /dev/null ISO image size and filename: 724M /home/artica-1.1.050713.iso Looks perfect for me. Can you please loop mount this iso image and check if the correct file are located in the config space on this iso? Did you specify -C? I didn't find any -C on the man page... how this token works ??? man fai-cd !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN No HTML mails, please. -- regards Thomas
Re: Kernel config magic?
On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 17:03:17 -0500, John Heim [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Is there a way to take a stock kernel config and turn it into a FAI boot kernel config? Hi John, from FAI 3.2 we are using a stock Debian kernel with initrd, so I think you are still using an older FAI version. The README in the fai-kernels packages describes which options you have to set to build a kernel for FAI. But with FAI 3.2 and newer you can just use a plain kernel. This needs the unionfs module, which is broken for some kernel versions. But you may want to test aufs (another union file system). Add union=aufs to the kernel command line and check that this module available inside the nfsroot. But I did not test it myself yet. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2.8 released, new partition tool setup-storage available
Hi folks, I finally managed to include the new partition tool called setup-storage into FAI. It supports software RAID and LVM configuration and uses parted at backend for doing its work. This new tool can be enabled by setting the variable $USE_SETUP_STORAGE to 1, by default the old setup_harddisks tool is used. Many thanks to Christian Kern and Michael Tautschnig which wrote setup-storage and all other people that helped to test and improve it. You can install FAI 3.2.8 by adding this line to your sources.list file. deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download etch koeln -- regards Thomas
TOP500 cluster ATLAS installed with FAI
Hi all, I very happy to announce, that the ATLAS cluster of the Albert-Einstein-Institut, which was installed using FAI is placed at rank 58 in the newest TOP500 list of the most powerful computer systems in the world. You can find more information about this cluster in the list of detailed user reports [1] and on the TOP500.org web page [2]. [1] http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/q-answers.html#atlas [2] http://www.top500.org/system/9234 -- regards Thomas
Re: Can't open /scripts/live
On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:58:05 +0200, Tobias Herziger [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: kernel= '/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-xen-amd64' ramdisk = '/boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-xen-amd64' You have to use the kernel and initrd that is generated by make-fai-nfsroot. Only this initrd will include the live scripts, that are needed for booting up the machine. It should be possible to add the xen kernel into the nfsroot and then xen kernels including the live scripts in their initrd should be generated. -- regards Thomas
Re: nfsroot won't mount
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:12:09 +0200, Tobias Herziger [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Do, 2008-07-10 at 14:46 -0400, Alex Volkov wrote: What does it say after that? There should be a long pause before an error message is displayed. It says nothing more since i went home yesterday ;) Hi Tobi, have a look at this mail. Maybe it's related to your problem. https://lists.uni-koeln.de/pipermail/linux-fai/2008-June/005980.html If not, check if you can see (syslog file or tcpdump) the mount requests on your nfs server. -- regards Thomas
Re: fai-cd: How eject the cd-rom or reboot automatically ?
On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:28:06 +0200, TOUZEAU DAVID [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: At the end of the fai-cd installation, i would like to automatically eject the CD or reboot the system instead asking press Enter key ? Is it possible ? Add the flag reboot, which should do the job. -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI 3.2.9 released, lenny support
On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:59:59 +0200, Christopher Huhn [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Does that mean that 3.2.9 does not support installing etch anymore? At least there are no 3.2.9 Etch packages up to now. FAI 3.2.9 may also work with etch, but I will not test it any more with etch. IIRC, most changes are not lenny related. As a hint, I did installations with FAI 3.2.8 and aufs and kernel 2.6.25, so this is not a problem. If you have problems running 3.2.9 on etch, send a short mail or join us on IRC, will will help you to get it running. -- regards Thomas
Re: Installs being dropped straight into a busybox shell
On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:38:46 +0200, Tim Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I'm trying to install etch from an FAI CD image but am not having much luck. I got past one error by adding live-initramfs as instructed at http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/FAI_3.2_Usage_Changes but am now just having the installation drop into a busybox shell almost straight after starting. I have a screenshot if necessary. The prompt in the shell is (initramfs), I'm really not sure what's going on here? You have a shell can type some commands to track down the error. The best thing would be that you join the IRC channel #fai, there we can help you much faster. I guess something went wrong with creating the ISO image, or you have hardware that is not fully detected by the kernel. -- regards Thomas
Re: where is the gpg key for the fai repo?
On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:43:46 -0700, =?ISO-8859-7?B?yPns3PIgzuXt3Orn8g==?= [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: can anyone tell me where to get the gpg key for the debian fai repo? W: GPG error: http://apt-proxy etch Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY DC13E54EAB9B66FD It's my gpg key. Below you can find the fingerprint of it. It's also available in the keyring and in the usual databases. -- Thomas Lange Institut fuer Informatikmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Universitaet zu Koeln Pohligstr. 1Telefon: +49 221 470 5303 50969 KoelnFax: +49 221 470 5317 1024D/AB9B66FD AEA6 A8C1 BD8E 67C4 8EF6 8BCA DC13 E54E AB9B 66FD -- -- regards Thomas
Re: FAI Class Question
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:10:16 -0700 (PDT), Kim Nguyen [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I had a question. is there a way to pass an argument via PXE in order to tell FAI to install a class profile? I have pxe giving the following menu at boot: I want to add something like the following to the menu: label 2 kernel vmlinuz-vmware append ip=dhcp FAI_ACTION=install root=/dev/nfs rw nfsroot=192.168.1.252:/srv /fai/nfsroot,v3,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768 FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt,reboot class=DESKTOP where if I choose option 2 from the menu I install the DESKTOP class instead of the server version in #1. Is this possible or easy to hack into the FAI code? Yes, it's possible. All key-values pairs on the kernel command line are defined as normal shell variables in FAI. Therefore I would use myclass=DESKTOP, then you can use this variable in a script class/* where you just echo the value of this variable. This will automatically be defined as a FAI class. -- regards Thomas
Re: nfs-kernel-server and nfs-user-server
On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:36:40 +0200, Jean Spirat [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: is there a way to use the nfs-user-server with FAI (debian etch) and not the kernel one ? AFAIK the user server do not support the no_root_squash option, which is needed for FAI. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2.10 released
-> FAI 3.2.10 released linux-fai -- Diskussionsfden -- -- Chronologisch -- <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7266757337600734"; google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.mail-archive.com/blank.png"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_channel = "8427791634"; google_color_border = "FF"; google_color_bg = "FF"; google_color_link = "006792"; google_color_url = "006792"; google_color_text = "00"; //--> FAI 3.2.10 released Thomas Lange Antwort per Email an <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7266757337600734"; google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.mail-archive.com/blank.png"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_channel = "8427791634"; google_color_border = "FF"; google_color_bg = "FF"; google_color_link = "006792"; google_color_url = "006792"; google_color_text = "00"; //--> FAI 3.2.10 released Thomas Lange Antwort per Email an <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7266757337600734"; google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.mail-archive.com/blank.png"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_channel = "8427791634"; google_color_border = "FF"; google_color_bg = "FF"; google_color_link = "006792"; google_color_url = "006792"; google_color_text = "00"; //--> FAI 3.2.10 released Thomas Lange Antwort per Email an <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7266757337600734"; google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.mail-archive.com/blank.png"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_channel = "8427791634"; google_color_border = "FF"; google_color_bg = "FF"; google_color_link = "006792"; google_color_url = "006792"; google_color_text = "00"; //--> FAI 3.2.10 released Thomas Lange Antwort per Email an <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7266757337600734"; google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.mail-archive.com/blank.png"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_channel = "8427791634"; google_color_border = "FF"; google_color_bg = "FF"; google_color_link = "006792"; google_color_url = "006792"; google_color_text = "00"; //--> FAI 3.2.10 released Thomas Lange Antwort per Email an <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-7266757337600734"; google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.mail-archive.com/blank.png"; google_ad_width = 160; google_ad_height = 600; google_ad_format = "160x600_as"; google_ad_channel = "8427791634"; google_color_border = "FF"; google_color_bg = "FF"; google_color_link = "006792"; google_color_url = "006792"; google_color_text = "00"; //--> FAI 3.2.10 released Thomas Lange Antwort per Email an
Re: Etch, RAID and FAI
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:00:43 +1200, Lee Begg [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I'm trying to set up some servers to have raid, but the FAI box is Etch, and only has FAI 3.1.8 and I know that 3.2.8 or later is required. Can I regenerate the nfsroot with lenny which has the newer version? I'd also need to update the config files. Would this work? Yep. Add this line to /etc/fai/apt/sources.list and to /etc/apt/sources.list on your install server deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download lenny koeln Then your system (and your nfsroot) will get the the newest FAI packages for lenny, even if it self runs etch. The nfsroot will be a lenny nfsroot, since FAI 3.2.10 uses by default lenny. This is excatly what I;m doing on my systems. Or do I need to update the FAI-server? No. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2.11 released
A new version of the FAI packages was uploaded to the Debian mirrors. Most fixes were documentation fixes, and two small patches in the control files were applied. The new packages are also available in the following repository deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download lenny koeln -- regards Thomas
RE: Regular kernel?
On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 14:27:18 -0400, Fortier,Vincent [Montreal] [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Although there is a: /lib/modules/2.6.24-etchnhalf.1-amd64/kernel/fs/ufs/ufs.ko Could it just be a matter of forcing the load of the module at boot time? ufs is not aufs. -- regards Thomas
RE: FAI 3.2.10 - Etch.
On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:08:27 -0400, Fortier,Vincent [Montreal] [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Got it! Actually it was more obvious than expected. It's mainly du to the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf file. My exports are set to read-only mode therefore it is impossible to to write from the client on the NFS share provided by the server... Hence, LVM cannot create it's cache and lock files. Changing theses on my nfsroot fixed it: The install client mount the nfsroot read-only, but FAI adds a unionfs since 3.2 (or aufs since 3.2.9) on top of it. So, the whole nfsroot is writeable for each client and this problem should not occur. Maybe you are using an older FAI version, that used some loopback mounted ramdisks for making some subdirectories writable. -- regards Thomas
Re: Softupdates whith FAI 3.2.10 on Lenny
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:28:44 +0200, Axel Freyn [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: FAI-softupdate. Looking at the precise position of the message, it happens during 'task_updatebase', and there by the aptitude-command from file /usr/lib/fai/updatebase, line 37: $ROOTCMD aptitude -y safe-upgrade I don't see, why this aptitude is called without the aptopt-options -o Dpkg::Options::=--force-confdef -o Dpkg::Options::=--force-confold which where used in the apt-get commands before? Could this be a possible explanation? I think this option was just lost when changing from apt-get to aptitude commands there. If you think the $aptopt should be added again (can you test this please) I can readd it. It would be perfect if you could write a bug report for this. -- regards Thomas
Re: custom kernel from kernel.org
On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:17:58 +0200, Christian Quast [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: What are the required steps to create a custom kernel 2.6.20 used during the installation? Just use a plain 2.6.27 kernel from lenny inside the etch nfsroot. Therefore create a local repository, that inluced then needed deb files. That should work. Also make sure you have a new live-initramfs package inside the nfsroot. You do not need to comile a kernel on your own. -- regards Thomas
Re: Installclient hangs after kernel boot
On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:44:05 +0200, Daniel Oetken [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: i defined before. But before the client can mount the nfsroot it hangs. The last thats showing up on the monitor is: So, you also cannot see any mount request on the install server? tg3: eth0: Link is up at 1000Mbps, full duplex. tg3: eth1: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX. Are both network cards connected to the network? Are you using a DHCP gateway? Which FAi version are you using? -- regards Thomas
Re: One-time net-install
On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:16:36 +0200, Nikola Kne$,1!(Bevi$,1 '(B [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: does anyone has a tip/trick how to do one-time net-install. I'm currently using fai-chboot to enable netinstall on a machine, and reboot it. Then I wait until I see in faimond that the machine started installation, so I again fire up fai-chboot to disable netinstall on that machine (ie. next time machine boots, it will do localboot). Is there a way to simplify this? I would like to use fai-chboot once... You have to define LOGUSER and then call fai-setup. Then everything should be set up (ssh keys) so that each install client can log into you install server and call fai-chboot. You can also use faimond -b. -- regards Thomas
Re: making custom mkinitramfs
On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:34:25 +0200, Jean Spirat [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I wanted to know the best way to make a custom mkinitramfs for FAI. Right now i just changed my configs and used: Which configs? mkinitramfs -o /srv/tftp/fai/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-amd64 2.6.26-1-amd64 Is it enough ? I guess not as the unionfs and such should be installed somewhere no ? FAI is now using aufs instead of unionfs. -- regards Thomas
Re: making custom mkinitramfs
On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:48:59 +0200, Jean Spirat [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: so how to make the initramfs with all the dependancy needed, do you know a list of it ? How would you build a new initramfs for FAI on say a debian lenny ? First of all, I see not need to build a custom initramfs. But have a look at make-fai-nfsroot -k or -K. This recreates the initrd inside the nfsroot and copies it to the $TFTPROOT. You can just add more kernel packages to /etc/fai/NFSROOT if you need different kernels for your nfsroot. -- regards Thomas
Re: One-time net-install
On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:11:52 +0200, Nikola Kne$,1!(Bevi$,1 '(B [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: BTW, how can I pass the name of the kernel to fai-chboot so it can set proper kernel line in pxelinux.cfg? man fai-chboot Look at option -s corresponding pxelinux.cfg entry? I think I may encountered that the machine with .disable refused to do localboot!? Call fai-chboot -o default once (also explained in the man page). -- regards Thomas
fai 3.2.13 released
The new FAI release 3.2.13 fixes a minor problem in fcopy and an important bug in setup-storage when using vgcreate. As usual, packages are available from deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download lenny koeln -- regards Thomas
Re: problem setting NFSROOT
On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:57:46 +0200, Huisman G [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: initrd.img-2.6.26-1-amd64. The NFS mount of the nfsroot fails because the ROOTSERVER (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is always set to the address of our DHCP server, which is not the same as the NFS server. The option server-name in dhcpd.conf will set the rootserver variable for the kernel. We use FAI for installing our debian servers (10) and workstations (200). The setup for debian etch is working fine as was the case for sarge. Good. Why didn't I get the FAI questionnaire yet from you ;-) You know I'm alsways very interested in this feedback from the FAI users. Please have a look at: http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/questionnaire -- regards Thomas
Re: problem setting NFSROOT
On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:57:46 +0200, Huisman G [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: We used to pass NFSROOT=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/path/to/nfsroot from the hex-ip-adress file in /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ Yep, that should also work, but maybe this data gets overwritten by the DHCP information. because the ROOTSERVER (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is always set to the address of our DHCP server, which is not the same as the NFS server. next-server in dhcpd.conf sets this variable (really, I just tries it in my environment). But AFAIK this is also the address of the TFTP server, from which your install clients tries to download the pxelinux.0 file, so this is not really what you want. Mmm, this may be a bug in ipconfig. Ask the klibc-utils maintainer or maybe the live-initramfs people if they have a workaround or patch for this. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2.14 released
This is another new FAI release which fixes mainly a problem in setup-storage. I hope to get this release into lenny. -- regards Thomas
Re: Kernel panic with hardware RAID
On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:32:05 -0500, Ryan Steele [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I'm using FAI 3.2.14 on my Ubuntu systems (booting the 2.6.24-21 kernel), and it all seems to work, except when I have a hardware RAID [ 81.860291] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk [ 82.021455] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 [ 82.085003] sd 0:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 [ 82.384012] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! Hmm. It may be a kernel bug. Add the option debug to the kernel commands line, this may give you more output from the initrd. But if it's the kernel panics before the initrd is startet you have no chance to debug this. Than it's a problem of the kernel. -- regards Thomas
Re: lenny/amd64 nfsroot on etch/i386
On Thu, 6 Nov 2008 20:40:28 +0100, Nikola Kne?evi? [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I first installed lenny/amd64 on a virtual machine, and copied the setup from the main fai-server. Then, I changed dhcpd.conf to advertise this VM as a fai-server. Further, I created another VM on my laptop, to be the test-client. When I try to install lenny/amd64 on this test-client using fai, kernel crashes during boot. Specifically, it never installs, and during the boot process I get this message: List of all partitions: No filesystem could mount root, tried: Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block (0,255) Do you really boot the kernel and initrd which is used for fai? If you have two dhcp servers in the same network, this may cause problems. block (0,255) is the pseudo device when you supply root=/dev/nfs. It seems that this kernel does not know of this device. -- regards Thomas
Re: default locales
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:20:22 -0500, Ryan Steele [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: But even if it does, I really think that FAI should check to make sure the client really has the debconf information we're told we can set in the $FAI_CONFIGDIR/debconf/ directory. Based on the log entries (or lack thereof), I initially assumed nothing went wrong when setting up the client's locales, which is not the case, and wasted time looking elsewhere for problems. It didn't get what the right solution would be? If there's a pacakge that needs to be installed before others, we can do this in a hook. If you need to set additional variables, thsi can also be done in a hook with suffix .source. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems with lenny
On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:21:43 +0100, Nikola Kne?evi? [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Selecting previously deselected package linux-image-2.6.26-1-amd64. Unpacking linux-image-2.6.26-1-amd64 (from .../linux-image-2.6.26-1- amd64_2.6.26-8_amd64.deb) ... Ok, Aborting, since the bootloader might not handle an initrd/ initramfs image. Which bootloader do you install? Maybe there's no bootloaded installed. -- regards Thomas
Re: Which class gets applied first?
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:15:38 -0500, Ryan Steele [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Preface: using version 3.2.14 In a situation where the FAI client uses several classes that have package_config files, are all the applicable package_config/ files processed in a certain order, or at the same time? All package names from both classes are combined to a long list. ...does CLASS1 always get executed before CLASS2, resulting in CLASS1's packages being installed first? No. I get the feeling that all the packages get added to one big packages list when all is said and done Yep. that's the way install_pacakges is working. you will also see the in software.log (or fai.log) which shows you how aptitude or apt-get is called. I have one situation were I also like to determine the order of packages that gets installed, so I use a hook for that. Not perfect, since it doesn't use the package_config file. IMO it's a bug in aptitude if some combination of packages don't install well. Maybe I should add an option for install_packages, which tells it to isntall packages in the order of classes instead of collecting all names to a long list. I there a special reason for you that the packages are installed in the order of the classes? -- regards Thomas
Re: How to debug install_packages?
On Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:41:30 +0100, Thomas Neumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: How can I get more information on what's going on from install_packages? Is there a better way besides set -x and echo? if you add verbose to FAI_FLAGS, install_packages is called with -v. There's something fishy going on and I don't know what triggers it. During a Debian installation i_p tries to call yast and install kernel-xenpae. The only time this package is mentioned in my config space is in package_config/DEFAULT - but in a way that it should never be regarded as must install this for Debian (or Ubuntu). Put your packages_config/DEFAULT and fai.log onto paste.debian.net and we can help you. -- regards Thomas
debugging initramfs boot process, install client can't mount root file system
If you have any troubles during the boot process of your install clients and they can't mount the nfsroot, you like to have a shell for debuging. You can get a shell by adding break=bottom as kernel parameter (in a pxelinux.cfg file). This stops the boot process and spaws a shell within the initramfs. Other values for break= can be found if you search all initramfs scripts for the subroutine maybe_break: maybe_break top maybe_break modules maybe_break premount maybe_break mount maybe_break mountroot maybe_break bottom maybe_break init maybe_break live-premount maybe_break live-bottom maybe_break pre-mdadm maybe_break post-mdadm -- regards Thomas
Re: tg3 network cards [SOLVED]
On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:34:09 +0100, Ralf Utermann ralf.uterm...@physik.uni-augsburg.de said: An another point: for the first tests I manually changed the initrd, but for going in production I prefer make-fai-nfsroot just coming back with the initrd I need. Maybe I don't see it, does FAI provide a standard means for this? No, make-fai-nfsroot can only reinstall the kernels inside the nfsroot (options -k and -K). This may not what you need. You can also chroot into the nfsroot and call dpkg-reconfigure linux-image- This will rebuild the initrd. -- regards Thomas
FAI 3.2.15 released
I just uploaded FAI 3.2.15 which mostly fixes documentation errors but also two minor bugs. setup-storage now says if a partition is preserved or resized. A bug when using multiple network cards was also fixed. As usual, packages are available from all Debian mirros and from deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download lenny koeln Have fun with the new FAI version. -- regards Thomas
Re: Upgrading from a working etch to lenny
On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:01:54 +0100, Aitor m...@aitorpazos.es said: upgrade to lenny. I've updated the FAI server machine so now I have FAI 3.2. Which FAI version do you have? 3.2.14 is the newest version in lenny. The problem now is that when I try to perform an install on a client I get errors because root filesystem is mounted as read-only. It tries to use nfs fs instead of a ram based one so obviously it can't write on nfs. I've included live-initramfs, live-helper and unionfs in NFSROOT packages. the lenny package of FAI now uses aufs instead of unionfs. Boot params for pxelinux.cfg/*: kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=192.168.84.113:/srv/fai/nfsroot/live/filesystem.dir,v3 This is worng. You should always use fai-chboot to create the pxelinux.cfg files. Which kernel are you using during installation? -- regards Thomas
Re: [OT] How to serve apt. http vs nfs
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 10:58:11 +0100, Holger Levsen hol...@layer-acht.org said: Using nfs is faster though: No, not really. I did some performance tests in the past, and there were no real differences in the installation times. Sometimes http was slightly faster than NFS, but I think this was the cause of the NFS server. HTTP is easier to set up IMO, that's why I use HTTP. -- regards Thomas
Re: Problems with FAI 3.2.15 and Ubuntu Hardy (8.04.1)
On Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:30:03 -0800, Allan Bailey al...@nefud.org said: I've built and tested FAI 3.2.15 from an ubuntu hardy server (x86_64) using VMware instances, and they boot and install fine. With the same vmlinuz and initrd an actual hardware box hangs at mounting /. I've tested with break=mount and break=mountroot, and I only get the initramfs prompt with break=mount. The bootlog is here: http://pastebin.com/m2518c13d This box has two network cards. Maybe the kernel swaps eth0 and eth1, so you do a PXE boot from the first network card, which is then detected as eth1 by the kernel. There maybe also problems when you are using 2.6.24 and unionfs/aufs with ubuntu. I think there were some problems with older ubuntu kernel versions in the past. -- regards Thomas
Re: live-initramfs
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 19:36:35 +0100, Henning Fehrmann henning.fehrm...@aei.mpg.de said: I guess, a proper initrd has to come already with the kernel. not really, because dpkg-reconfigure linux-image... should be called, which creates the initrd. Creating the initrd for the kernel, do I need to use the live-initramfs hook? I am using the kernel-package tools. I would expect to get a initrd using make-kpkg --revision ... kernel-image --initrd This should work. But --initrd only saves a configuration option somewhere inside the kernel package, that an initrd will be created when this kernel poackage ist installed. The initrd is not included in the package itself IIRC. -- regards Thomas
Re: How do you automate fai installations?
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 19:35:47 +0100 (CET), Adrian Gibanel Lopez agiba...@alumnes.udl.cat said: So I re-ask my question. What's the best way for modiying FAI_FLAGS? Use fai-chboot for that. See man fai-chboot for more information. You have to call fai-chboot -o default once on your install server. -- regards Thomas
Re: How do you automate fai installations?
On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 19:56:06 +0100 (CET), Adrian Gibanel Lopez
agiba...@alumnes.udl.cat said:
I have to say that I have some errors written at errors.log when
installing (after running fai-chboot -IFv and booting).
Let's have a look at the code in lib/subroutines:
task_faiend() {
local dir cdromdevice
[ $do_init_tasks -eq 0 ] exit 0
wait_for_jobs
echo Press RETURN to reboot.
[ -z $flag_reboot ] : ${flag_reboot:=0}
[ -s $LOGDIR/error.log -a $flag_reboot -gt 0 ] sleep 10
# reboot without prompting if FAI_FLAG reboot is set
[ $flag_reboot -lt 1 ] read
echo Rebooting $HOSTNAME now
Maybe there's a bug in it, but IMO fai should only stop (calling the
read command) if the reboot flag is set to 0.
I remember having overviewed one script file that was run at the very end
of fai installation (maybe a hook) that did something like this:
If there are some errors then fai_reboot = 0.
Yep, this may be the cause that your installation always stops.
--
regards Thomas
Re: Fai installation failing on permissions
On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 11:10:14 +0100, leen smit l...@service2media.com said: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN Please, no HTML mails! Thank you very much!br You're welcome. BTW, I'm always very interested in user experiences with FAI. Can you please fill out the FAI questionnaire http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/questionnaire and send it back to me when you finished your project with FAI. -- regards Thomas
new FAI release 3.2.16 fixes critical bug when using dirinstall
FAI 3.2.16 was just uploaded and fixes a critical bug when using dirinstall. Get the newest FAI version for lenny by using this url: deb http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/download lenny koeln -- regards Thomas
