On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Alex wrote: > i'm somewhat confused as to what versions of fai and fai-bootcd i > should use. > i obtained the latest versions of fai and fai-kernels off the fai > homepage, > however, the fai-bootcd utility will not work with the latest version > of fai on woody (which is what i'm running).
fai-bootcd is designed to work with fai and fai-kernels from debian.org You'll need to downgrade to the version in woody, not from the FAI homepage, or: > can i force the install and hack it to work? Most probably, it should only need a few tweaks - maybe compare to fai-bootcd 0.3.x (intended for use with fai and fai-kernels in sarge). > what is my best option for creating a fully automated installation > off > cd rom? should i be using sid to create the NFSROOT and .iso cd > image? > > or should i downgrade fai to a version supported by the "stable" > version > of fai-bootcd (ie fai <= 2.3.4)? Either will work, but I'd probably stick with woody and downgrade. > /usr/share/doc/fai-bootcd/fai-bootcd.HOWTO.gz > Your kernel on the machine where you are building the FAI BootCD must > have > loopback support compiled as a module. The following option must be > set in > your .config > CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=m > does this mean the kernel that ends up on the host machine requires > this > as a module? will it fail if you have this option set to "y" ? No, this means the kernel on the machine where you're building the CD. > why must this be as a module? It's a limitation of mkinitrd-cd, I've asked for future versions to fix this. > it also mentios that these options must be set in the FAI kernel: > The following extra options must be applied: > > CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=y > CONFIG_IDE=y > CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y > CONFIG_ISO9660_FS=y > CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y > CONFIG_ZISOFS_FS=y > > does this mean i must RECOMPILE the fai kernel with these options? If you're using the kernel in fai-kernel, yes - you must recompile with these extra options. Exactly what fai-bootcd.HOWTO says. > my ultimate goal of building a fully self-contained automated > installation > of debian on CD seems like pretty hard work. is fai/fai-bootcd the > right > road to take? It works out of the box on sid/unstable, unfortunately there are a few patches that had to be made to old versions of fai and mkinitrd-cd but these aren't necessary for sid and hopefully when sarge goes stable everything will just work. However, you still need to configure FAI - once this is working it should all just work (if you're running the right versions, see http://holbytla.org/fai/) The HOWTO should cover everything, if it doesn't please let me know (privately) where you're stuck and I'll give you one-on-one help until you're up and running. > thanks all for any help you can provide. i can certainly see the > potential > and power of fai but have pretty much failed to unleash any of that > power > at this stage. Once you have FAI working, creating an fai-bootcd is fairly trivial. Niall Young Chime Communications Pty Ltd [EMAIL PROTECTED] Level 6, 263 Adelaide Terrace Ph: (+61) 08 9213 1330 / 0408 192 797 Perth, Western Australia 6000 "Sitting on the couch, dog licking my feet... It always gets the creative juices flowing..." -- Roger Yerramsetti, March 2004