Re: LOGUSER is undefined

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 4 Jun 2018 12:34:50 +0200 (CEST), Jean-mathieu CHANTREIN 
>  said:

> I haved install fai-server on debian buster. I add to /etc/fai/fai.conf 
this 2 line:
> LOGUSER=fai
> FAI_LOGPROTO=ssh
This sets LOGUSER only for the FAI server. For the clients you have to
set LOGUSER in a class/*.var file.


> P.S.: I want to propose pull request of the french traduction of 
fai-guide (http://fai-project.org/fai-guide-fr). I can't see this file on 
> https://github.com/faiproject/fai/tree/master/doc .
> How I can make pull request on the french traduction of the guide ?
Currently I do not find the sources of the french traduction. I will
sent you an email later about this.

> P.S.2: Is it safe to use fai-server on a debian testing basis for 
production ?
This depends on what you expect for your production
environment. Testing is not the stable release but it's also not
the unstable release ;-)

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: LOGUSER is undefined

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 4 Jun 2018 12:34:50 +0200 (CEST), Jean-mathieu CHANTREIN 
>  said:

> P.S.: I want to propose pull request of the french traduction of 
fai-guide (
> http://fai-project.org/fai-guide-fr). I can't see this file on 
> https://github.com/faiproject/fai/tree/master/doc .
> How I can make pull request on the french traduction of the guide ?
The git repository is here:
https://github.com/CyBerNetX/fai-guide-fr.git
I do not have write access to it, but you can try to contact the
author of it. If he does not respon to a pull request, you could fork
his repository. If you update the manual, just sent me an email, and I
will include the new version onto the web page.

-- 
regards Thomas

New ISO images using FAI 5.7

[Thomas Lange]

The new ISO images are now available, which still use kernel 4.9 but
FAI 5.7. If you select to install Ubuntu, now Ubuntu 18.04 aka Bionic
will be installed. Anyone still interested in installing Ubuntu 16.04
with the FAI images?
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: fai-project.org repository not armhf enabled

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 15:16:57 +0200, Martin Krämer  
> said:

> Unfortunately http://fai-project.org/download is not armhf enabled - due 
to this,
> the packages fai packages cannot be updated from this repository.
This is now fixed. The repository now also has the Packages.gz for
armhf.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Alternatives in package_lists?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 09:18:41 +0200, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> apt-get install "a | b" doesn't work.
Maybe the equivs package will help to create a package including
dependencies like a | b.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: FAI disk_config creating duplicate tmpfs entries in /etc/fstab

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:06:47 +0200, Pietro Stäheli 
>  said:

> I've set a tmpfs mountpoint for FAI installations in disk_config/FAIBASE 
as follows:
> disk_config tmpfs
> tmpfs /tmp RAM:20% defaults
Oh, I never used a tmpfs definition in disk_config. I didn't knew this
will work. If this works, you can remove the line in FAIBASE/10-misc.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: LVM setup on image creation

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 20 Oct 2017 16:21:35 +0800, Kerwin Macrohon 
>  said:

> Hi Guys!
> Was trying to create an image using LVM disk config but to no avail.  Is 
> this doable? Thank you!
Yes. If you host does not have LVM, it's easy. If you host is also
using LVM you must use FAI 5.4. Older versions do not support
lvm on host and in disk image. There's an example disk_config/LVM.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Ubuntu Artful

[Thomas Lange]

I've removed this very old wiki howto. There's the script mk-basefile
in /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple/basefiles/mk-basefile which
is used for creating basefiles. Currently there's only an entry for
Ubuntu xenial, but a similar one should work for 17.10.

-- 
regards Thomas

FAI user references with nice logos

[Thomas Lange]

Hi folks,

finally I have created a web page with a lot of logos from companies
and organisations that are using FAI. Have a look at
https://fai-project.org/references/

If you like to be also on this list, just fill out the questionnaire[1]
and send it to me. If you already filled out the questionnaire in the
past, please check if it's worth to update it.

[1] http://fai-project.org/questionnaire/
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Use of /dev/disk/by-path/... in disk_config?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:40:16 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> 1. Is it possible to map "/dev/disk/by-path/pci-:00:11.4-ata-1" to
>"disk1" (etc.) for easier reference later?
Yes. I use a script class/99-disklist.sh for changing the list of disks to
my local meeds. The script is attached. It uses the disks model numbers
to get a new order of the disks. The same should work with the serial
number or path.


> 2. Would the following work (with that mapping merged):

>   or do I have to take additional measures to make sure that the md 
devices
>   "find" their components?
I do not understand what you mean by "find". Here's an raid1 example
from me. Also have a look at the nice feature sameas:disk1.

disk_config disk1align-at:1M
primary  -   30G-100G   - -
logical  swap1G-10Gswap sw
logical  -   1G-500G   - -
logical  -   1G-   - -

disk_config disk2sameas:disk1

disk_config raid   fstabkey:uuid preserve_reinstall:1,2
raid1  /   disk1.1,disk2.1ext4  rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro  
createopts="-m15"
raid1  /home   disk1.6,disk2.6ext4  rw,noatime,nosuid
createopts="-m1" tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
raid1  /srvdisk1.7,disk2.7ext4  rw,noatime,nosuid
createopts="-m1" tuneopts="-c0 -i0"

> 3. Has anyone setup ZFS using FAI?
Kerim, who wrote the btrfs code for setup-storage was thinking about
adding ZFS support in the past. Maybe the interested people can do
some funding to get this implemented.




99-disklist.sh
Description: Binary data
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Use of /dev/disk/by-path/... in disk_config?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 18 Jan 2018 16:08:32 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> Talking about "path" - is there a trick to get multipath-tools installed
> in the nfsroot? All my attempts fail due to initramfs not cooperating 
> with dracut.
Just add the packages to /etc/fai/NFSROOT. Then they will be
installed into the nfsroot when you recreated the nfsroot.
Do you need the multipath tools for booting the machine, or just for
accessing some disk during installation?
If needed for booting, we may have to customized the initrd inside the
nfsroot (copied to the tftp dir), because dracut may not work
out-of-the-box with multipath devices.
But I'm also the Debian maintainer of dracut, if you need some help.

> Thanks for your constant support.
It would be nice if you could update your FAI questionnaire. The last
I got is from 2009. And I would like to add you to the references page
with your logo. https://fai-project.org/references/
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Use of /dev/disk/by-path/... in disk_config?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 18 Jan 2018 14:09:49 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> Thanks. Since the "find" command returns an unsorted list, how do you 
make sure
> you get the right order?
I do not care, since I only match on the model type of the disk, not
exactly which disk. You could use the serial number, or use the
by-path directory.

> Am I correct that "disk1" maps to the first item in the disklist, and so 
on?
Yes.

> Between setting up the machine with FAI, and the reboot after maintenance,
> the number of external JBOD disks may have changed. (Cable failure?)
> Will md devices use the modified device names?
I do not know. But I'm pretty sure that md uses some uuid on the
partitions of the disks to assembly the md device.

> BTW, can I mix absolute and relative sizes (as in "500G-100%")?
Yes. IIRC internally we convert everything to blocks.

> Ah, OK... for now, partition and mountdisks hooks may do the trick...
Yes, hooks always do the trick ;-)

I guess it would be fine if you could publish your zfs hooks here on
the list. Others may be interested in them.
-- 
regards Thomas

FAI 5.5.1 released

[Thomas Lange]

The new FAI 5.5.1 version is now available. Here are some of the
changes: fcopy -S which does variable substitution in the form of
{%varname%} now also executes a preinst script if available. You can
now create ISO images greater 4GB. Syncing software raid devices
during installation is now disabled, which speeds up the installation
for soft raid setups a lot.

I managed to disable the question for each new user which xfce panel
to use (empty or default). This was hard work to find out and there's
no tool or easy config option to set in XFCE. It seems that the
desktop developers do not think about automation like we sysadmin do
all day long.

Finally, the script fai-mirror can now handle backports
repositories. I will use this feature for creating FAI CD's for Debian
stable using a kernel from backports in the future.
I plan to extend the FAI.me service https://fai-project.org/FAIme
so you can build your own customized installation image with a
backports kernel or other packages from backports.

The new FAI packages are also available for stretch using this line in
sources.list:

deb https://fai-project.org/download stretch koeln

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Use of /dev/disk/by-path/... in disk_config?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 16:34:33 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> Bad news: I just learned that the systems will get CentOS installed.
> While there's still an option to replace the system disks, and run 
> another installation (Debian 9 via FAI) I'm afraid that will void
> our warranty.
You get warranty when running CentOS on hardware? Normally the vendors
wants you to run RHEL to get warranty.
But you still can install CentOS using FAI ;-)

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: /tmp read-only? FAI 5.5, Stretch, NFSv3

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 17 Jan 2018 14:09:03 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> after running several sysinfo FAI_ACTIONs with jessie setups (and "aufs"
> in the append line), I decided the time has come to switch to Stretch.
In stretch you need rootovl instead of aufs in the kernel cmdline.
We are not using aufs any more but 4.x kernel is using overlayfs.
If you are using fai-chboot, this should be added to the pxelinux cfg
file.

> (BTW, page 29 has a small "c"
> instead of capital "C" in the fai-make-nfsroot example line).
Thanks, this is now fixed.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Keyboard problem, caps lock key does not work

[Thomas Lange]

Hi john,

there's a config line in examples/simple/debconf/DEBIAN which includes
the option nocaps. The whole line is

keyboard-configuration  keyboard-configuration/optionscode string 
ctrl:nocaps,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: fcopy resolv.conf in task_repository

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 09:43:44 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:

> In subroutines/task_repository you fcopy /etc/resolv.conf. 
> It is possible to omit this?
This can only be omited by rewriting task_repository or using a hook
as you already did.

> In task_confdir the resolv.conf of the FAI Server is copied to the 
installing client, that fine for us.
> We fcopy the production resolv.conf with the LAST class.
When using fcopy for two different environments fcopy cannot handle
this because the list of classes is fixed. In task_repository the code
defines that when using fcopy /etc/resolv.conf successfully copies a
file, we do not use the resolv.conf from the server. We could change
this ordering in task_repository. But I suggest this solution.

Remove your repository.DEBIAN_9 hook and write a hook
updatebase.DEBIAN_9. In this hook you use:

[ -f /etc/resolv.conf ] && cp $v /etc/resolv.conf $FAI_ROOT/etc

This will overwrite the fcopy version of resolv.conf in /target (done
by task_repository) by the resolv.conf from inside the nfsroot, which
is what you want to have.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Using FAI Profiles

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 13 Feb 2018 09:34:52 -0600, Itamar Gal  
> said:

> I'm a little unclear on how to use FAI profiles. I created a profile file:
> /srv/fai/config/class/myprofile.profile
FAI profiles are only used if the flag menu is used which is normally
not done when doing a dirinstall. Then you will see a curses menu like this:
http://fai-project.org/slideshow/page105.html

Do you really want a curses menu like this with a dirinstall?

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Using FAI Profiles

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 13 Feb 2018 11:59:40 -0600, Itamar Gal  
> said:

> Thanks for the response. No, I definitely don't want the curses menu. I 
was hoping that there was a command-line option. I guess I'm confused about
> the purpose of the profiles; I thought they were supposed to bundle 
several classes together for convenience and clarity. Is that not right?
Primary, profiles are used for building the curses menu which
internally are a bundle of classes. They were not created for general
bundling classes together.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: fai-make-nfsroot bug

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 5 Feb 2018 12:24:41 -0800, Bill MacAllister  
> said:

> Just hit this minor bug in fai-server 5.3.6.
> --- /usr/sbin/fai-make-nfsroot2018-02-02 13:06:52.0 +
> +++ /var/tmp/fai-make-nfsroot 2018-02-05 20:23:41.370416545 +
> @@ -477,7 +477,7 @@
>   if [ -d $cfdir/apt/keys ]; then
>   local f
>   for f in `find $cfdir/apt/keys -type f -name '*.asc'`; do
> -cp $f $$NFSROOT/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d
> + cp $f $NFSROOT/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d
>   done
Thanks for the fix. I had to look several times at the diffs before I
saw the problem.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: tasksel in basefiles

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 16 Feb 2018 10:05:18 +0100, Yann Bachy 
>  said:

> Can someone explain why tasksel packages are clearly announces useable in 
fai manual:

> but the default mk-basefile script excludes tasksel from all debian 
distros

> What is the philosophy behind this, what did i not understand, and why 
must I remove tasksel from the exclude list to be able to install tasksel 
packages ?
Hi Yann,

this is for historical reasons, but they are stupid. In the past you
needed tasksel for installing task packages. Now you can use apt-get
to install a package like task-german. So

PACKAGES taskinst
german

does the same as

PACKAGES install
task-german

In the past, I though we could save some space by exculding tasksel
from the base file. But it's less than a MB. So, I will fix that, and
the next FAI version will not exclude tasksel any more.

--
regards Thomas

New FAI version and a new dracut version

[Thomas Lange]

In FAI version 5.5.4 the command fai-diskimage now supports
raw.xz and raw.zst format and multiple threads when compressing these
formats. The command fai-make-nfsroot has a new option -P which also
preserves the ssh host keys from inside the nfsroot.

I've also uploaded a new dracut version to the package repository of
the FAI project, since FAI uses dracut during the boot process.

I will create new FAI ISO images during the next week.

-- 
regards Thomas

FAI 5.5.5

[Thomas Lange]

I found a minor bug in fai-make-nfsroot (in 5.5.4), so I released FAI 5.5.5.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Missing Sections in FAI Documentation

[Thomas Lange]

Oh, these sections are empty since they were added. For the next FAI
version I've added some text to them, but more information on these
parts are in the chapter
http://fai-project.org/fai-guide/#_a_id_install_a_fai_installs_your_plan

> On Tue, 12 Dec 2017 14:24:04 -0600, Itamar Gal  
> said:

> Dear FAI Users:
> While reading through the official FAI documentation I noticed that
> two sections appear to be empty, specifically the section named
> "Extract base file":

> http://fai-project.org/fai-guide/#_a_id_extrbase_a_extract_base_file

> and the (adjacent) section named "Debconf preseeding":

> http://fai-project.org/fai-guide/#_a_id_debconf_a_debconf_preseeding

> Is there content missing from the documentation? Or are these sections
> no longer relevant?
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Ubuntu 17.10 (artful) headsup

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 27 Dec 2017 13:34:33 -0600, John G Heim  
> said:

> devices, using netplan instead of ifupdown. Configuration is now written 
> as YAML files to /etc/netplan instead of in /etc/network/interfaces."
OMG, that's why I do not like Ubuntu and why I only use LTS versions!
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Ubuntu Artful

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 27 Dec 2017 20:11:30 +0100, Robert Markula  
> said:

> # apt-get -y install pbuilder debootstrap
> Then you create the basefile:
> # pbuilder create | tee /root/pbuilder.log
IMO this is too complicated. Why using pbuilder when debootstrap is sufficient?

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Dual FAI Configurations

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 3 Jan 2018 09:53:36 -0600, Itamar Gal  said:

> 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?
There are several places where you can use another dir instead of the
default /etc/fai.
fai-make-nfsroot, fai-mirror, fai-chboot and fai-cd support specifying
a different directory. IIRC they all use -C, but please check the man
pages.

> If so, which variables do I need to set in my ~/local/etc/fai/fai.conf
Check fai.conf and nfsroot.conf in your ~/local/etc/fai and it's up to
you which things you want to have different and which should be the
same.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: setup-storage fails on blank disk

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 3 Jan 2018 13:53:40 +0100, Andreas Heinlein  
> said:

> I have encountered a problem with setup-storage which occurs only when
> the disk is blank, i.e. wiped with nwipe/dban or brand new.
This is very strange. I would only expect problems, if the disk is not wiped.


> It then
> fails on creating the LVM; running 'pvcreate' returns 'cannot open
> /dev/sda5 exclusively'. I have attached the fai.log with all the details.
> When I reboot the machine, which now has a partition table in place,
> everything works fine. Same for reinstalling machines which were already
> installed with earlier versions of FAI.
I took your disk_config file from the fai.log and did an installation
with FAI 5.5, kernel 4.9 and dracut 045+132-1 inside the nfsroot. Then
I started a new kvm machine with a fresh, empty disk. Everything works
fine. No problems.

So I cannot reproduce your error.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Several Questions

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 26 Feb 2018 17:40:14 -0800, Bill MacAllister  
> said:

> prevent fsck from running.  Specifically metadata_csum is preventing 
> fsck from running. How would we specify a setup-storage to create file 
> systems without that option?
This is already in FAI since FAI 5.4. Add this into the disk_config
for XENIAL:
createopts="-O ^metadata_csum"

> Creating a standalone CD with a fixed address
This can be done in the grub menu of the CD. Like this:
ip=192.168.33.250::192.168.33.1:255.255.255.0:faiserver:eth0:off

The file /etc/fai/grub.cfg has an entry for setting up a FAI server
with a fixed IP address. There you see the syntax.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: fai installation does not create correct /etc/hosts and /etc/network/interfacfes

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:49:33 +, Ralf Brinkmann 
>  said:

> The server created via the FAI ISO image has a faulty /etc/hosts and the 
/etc/network/interfacfes is not correct. In the nfsroot 
„/srv/stretch-default-cd/nfsroot/etc“ the hosts file is correct
> an does contain all values. On the machine, created manually frm the ISO 
image, the /etc/hosts does no longer contain the line with the ip, long 
hostname short hostname. In the /etc/network/
> interfaces file you will only find NON-IP as value.

> What is wrong and how can I fix it?
I do not know what's going wrong there.
But the script scripts/FAIBASE/10-misc edit the hosts file. The same
is done in scripts/DEBIAN/30-interface for /etc/network/interfaces,
which is created from scratch. You can write a hook that just copies
the version of these files from the nfsroot to the target if this fits
in your environment.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: FAI 5.3.6 stretch: Predictable Network Interface Names

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 22 Aug 2018 16:54:59 +0200, Alexander Bugl 
>  said:

> # less /var/log/fai/localhost/last/shell.log
> =   shell: DEBIAN/30-interface   =
> Device "ens192" does not exist.
> DEBIAN/30-interface  OK.
I wonder which command prints the 'Device does not exist'
message. Oh I see. It's this call:

ip -o -f inet addr show $NIC1

Now I also see this error messages in my fai logs. But in my
environment the interface config is created correctly, because I use
the class DHCPC.


Please try to exchange the two lines in 30-interface
newnicnames
CIDR=$(ip -o -f inet)

I hope this fixes the issue.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: FAI 5.3.6 stretch: Predictable Network Interface Names

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 23 Aug 2018 09:44:00 +0200, Alexander Bugl 
>  said:

> P.S.: I use some more (minor) modifications for 30-interface, probably
> you like to apply the attached patch?
Thanks for your patch. It's now applied.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: regarding centos6 installation

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 14:11:15 +0300, Antanas Masevičius 
>  said:

> Error 14t: Filesystem compatibility error, cannot read whole file
grub> quit
This is the hint in the grub docu:

error 14 : Filesystem compatibility error, cannot read whole file
Some of the filesystem reading code in GRUB has limits on the length of the 
files it can read. This error is returned when the user runs into such a limit. 


> It looks like grub does not recognise ext4 fs. I don't get this error if 
I set ext3 in disk_config, but I would like to use ext4.
Maybe grub in CentOS 6 is too old to support ext4.


-- 
regards Thomas

Re: mmc

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 10:30:17 +0200, Marc SCHAEFER 
>  said:

> On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 08:54:06PM +0100, linux service wrote:
>> seems like making a partition on a mmc would be :mmcblk0p1, second 
partition: mmcblk0p2
> NB: maybe this was already integrated in FAI 5.
Yes, this was added in FAI 5.4.

> Thank you for writing FAI, it's amazing: I am installing
> workstations, servers and embedded system with it for the
> last 15 years or so.
Thanks for the nice feedback. Did you already filled out the FAI
questionnaire? http://fai-project.org/questionnaire

-- 
regards Thomas

FAI 5.7.1

[Thomas Lange]

A minor update of FAI was released ibncluding some bug fixes. A new
feature was added. fai-diskimage now supports sparse images for
android devices using the suffix .simg.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Setup Storage RAID problem

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 30 Aug 2018 18:31:14 -0700, Bill MacAllister  
> said:

> Executing: yes | mdadm --create  /dev/md0 --level=raid1 --force --run 
> --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb3 /dev/sda3
> INIT: Entering runlevel: 2
> [info] Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel 2.
This i very strange! It seems, that the whole FAI process aborts, and
the normal init level scritps are run. That should never happen.

Any more info in the format.log file?
Please try to run this command manually and see if this aborts.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI + Legacy BIOS TFTP/PXELINUX

[Thomas Lange]

Hi John,

I didn't manage to get network booting using UEFI without grub but
with syslinux running. I copied the syslinux.efi and ldlinux.e64 into
my tftp directory. Using tcpdump I see that the UEFI is getting the
syslinux.efi file (even I use a different name and a symlink). I do
not see any request for the ldlinux.e64 file.

In your setup, are you really getting syslinux with UEFI use the
config from fai-chboot? Maybe your computer has still CSM (the legacy
mode) enabled, and you are still using pxelinux.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI TFTP/PXELINUX on thinkpad X230

[Thomas Lange]

I found a solution! Use syslinux.efi and ldlinux.e64 from experimental
The files can be found in those package versions

syslinux-common_6.04~git20171011.af7e95c3+dfsg1-3_all.deb
syslinux-efi_6.04~git20171011.af7e95c3+dfsg1-3_all.deb

Now UEFI netowrk boot works with my Thinkpad X230 with the new BIOS 2.73.
This means, there's no need for a loading a grubnetx64.efi and use
different config file for UEFI boot.

You can use the same configs in pxelinux.cfg/... created by
fai-chboot for PXE (legacy BIOS) and UEFI network boot.

-- 
regards Thomas

UEFI TFTP/PXELINUX on thinkpad X230

[Thomas Lange]

The Thinkpad X230 does not boot in UEFI only mode (no legacy/CSM mode)
via network card. This happens with BIOS 2.60 and also with the newest
BIOS 2.73. It only loads syslinux.efi and then no more tftp requests
are seen on the tftp server and the Thinkpad hangs.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI + Legacy BIOS TFTP/PXELINUX

[Thomas Lange]

Ok, I found a bug. My Thinkpad X230 does not work correctly using
UEFI. Using a Dell notebook shows, that my tftp, DHCP setup is correct
and loads ldlinux.e64 and then the pxelinux.cfg/. config files.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI + Legacy BIOS TFTP/PXELINUX

[Thomas Lange]

The current version of 60-misc now uses this
code

if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ]; then
echo GRUB_EFI
elif ifclass -o I386 AMD64 ; then
echo GRUB_PC
fi


-- 
regards Thomas

FAI setup for BeeGFS with ZFS, Re: Use of /dev/disk/by-path/... in disk_config?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 09:03:04 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> Still, FAI doesn't seem to offer an option to handle unpartitioned disks 
to
> be formatted as ext4 (I couldn't find any documentation involving 
"raw-disk"
Here's an example line:

raw-disk / 4GB ext4 rw createopts="-F"

-F helps mkfs not to stop and ask some questions.


-- 
regards Thomas

New FAIme feature

[Thomas Lange]

The FAIme build service now supports packages from the backports
repository. When selecting the stable distribution, you can also
enable backports packages. The installation image will then use the
kernel from backports (currently 4.14) and you can add additional
packages by adding /stretch-backports to the package name, e.g.
notmuch/stretch-backports.

Now, the FAIme service offers images build with Debian stable, stable
with backports and Debian testing. The web page is

  https://fai-project.org/FAIme

If you have any ideas for extensions or any feedback, send an email to
FAI.me =at= fai-project.org

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Use of /dev/disk/by-path/... in disk_config?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Sun, 21 Jan 2018 16:04:27 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   dracut* zfs-dracut*
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>   initramfs-tools initramfs-tools-core klibc-utils libaio1
>   libboost-iostreams1.62.0 libboost-random1.62.0 libboost-system1.62.0
>   libboost-thread1.62.0 libklibc libnspr4 libnss3 librados2 libsgutils2-2
>   liburcu4 multipath-tools sg3-utils sg3-utils-udev
> 0 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 2 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
> [...]

> I guess it's not the best idea to remove dracut from a FAI nfsroot.
Yep, this is a bad idea. I guess it's because multipath-tools-boot depends
on initramfs-tools instead of linux-initramfs-tool.
I think I will file a bug on this.

> Since dracut* is kind of an alternative approach to initramfs* you might 
want
> to get your packages listed as alternatives, to resolve the dependencies, 
if
> that's feasible (is it really a drop-in replacement?)
I will be a replacement for initramfs-tools, but I'm not sure if there
are some multipath hooks for initramfs which needs to be adapted to dracut.

-- 
regards Thomas

changes in the git structure of the FAI sources

[Thomas Lange]

Last weekend during the Chemnitzer Linuxtage I worked hard with Juri
who convinced me to split the FAI git repository into two parts using
a git submodule. The FAI config space examples are now hosted in a
separate git repository using the URL
   https://github.com/faiproject/fai-config.git
This helps syncing your own config space in git with the upstream
exmples, without having all FAI sources in the same tree.
The URL for the FAI sources did not changed, but you will also need
the submodule if you want to buld the FAI pakcages by your own.
Here's some help how to clone the FAI sources repository correctly.

Checking out the FAI sources:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/faiproject/fai.git

This command will also clone a git submodule which includes the FAI
config space examples. If you have already checked out the git
repository in the past (before the submodule was added), you have to
issue these commands once:

cd 
git submodule init
git submodule update


A big thanks again to Juri. You was very helpful with all the
complicated git commands and it was a pleasure to work with you.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: GRUB failing install after encryption

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:12:37 -0300, Davinder Chandhok 
>  said:

> After I configured the disk with LVM and encryption as shown below (and 
suggested by another member in a previous thread, suddenly my GRUB was not 
installing correctly. I'm not sure what could
> be causing this, as I don't know what an error code of 127
Look at fai.log if you see any error concerning the grub
isntallation. There's a shell script that configures grub. It's output
can be found in shell.log. Look for errors there.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Some packages not installing, but are in Ubuntu repos!

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:19:38 -0300, Davinder Chandhok 
>  said:

> Package list file (named for one of my classes):
> https://pastebin.com/mQmsVs7p
Wow, I never saw someone who's using a version number for every
package. Any reason why you did this? In case of any minor package
updates, you have to change this file. 

> Below is my fai.log:

> https://pastebin.com/DLZKxCDq

WARNING: Uppercase character found in package name in line 
lsb-base=4.1+Debian11ubuntu6.2

IMO this is a minor bug in FAI. FAI does not expect an uppercase
letter in the version number.

WARNING: These unknown packages are removed from the installation list: 
collada-dom-dev=2.4.4.7-ubuntu1~trusty1 
collada-dom2.4-dp-base=2.4.4.7-ubuntu1~trusty1 
Another minor bug in FAI. When install_packages tries to check if the
package name is correct this does not seem to work with =

I strongly recommend to remove the version numbers from the
package_config file.


E: Version '1:9.9.5.dfsg-3ubuntu0.16' for 'bind9-host' was not found
E: Version '4.101-0ubuntu13.3' for 'bluez' was not found
E: Version '2.6.0+bzr6593-1ubuntu1.6' for 'bzr' was not found
E: Version '20170717~14.04.1' for 'ca-certificates' was not found

This errors are cause by forcing a version number.



E: Version '2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1.14' for 'grub-common' was not found
E: Version '2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1.14' for 'grub-pc' was not found
E: Version '2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1.14' for 'grub-pc-bin' was not found
E: Version '2.02~beta2-9ubuntu1.14' for 'grub2-common' was not found

That's why grub was not installed.

Didn't you read the log file yourself?
-- 
regards Thomas

FAI.me service now supports creation of VM disk images

[Thomas Lange]

A few days ago, the new feature of the FAI.me build service was added.
Additionally to creating an installation image, FAI.me can now build
bootable disk images. These disk images can be booted in a VM like
KVM, Virtualbox or VMware or openstack.

You can define a disk image size, select a language, set a user
password, select a Debian distribution and enable backports just by
one click. It's possible to add your public key for access to the root
account. This can also be done by just specifying your GitHub account.
Several disk formats are supports, like raw (compressed with xz or
zstd), qcow2, vdi, vhdx and vmdk. And you can add your own list of
packages, you want to have inside this OS. After a few minutes the
disk images is created and you will get a download link, including a
log the the creation process and a link to the FAI configuration that
was used to create your customized image.

The new service is available at

   https://fai-project.org/FAIme/cloud

If you have any comments, feature requests or feedback, do not
hesitate to contact me.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Bug/solved: Problem with multiple NICs with FAI

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 21 Feb 2018 22:06:45 +0100, Christian Meyer  said:

> in the meantime I'm rather sure, that this is a bug. Please think about
> it.

> task_confdir fails in "line 822: /sys/class/net/$NIC1/address", when
> there is more that one NIC and routing gives more than one default
> route (using metric, e.g. for WLAN)
Which FAI version are you using? I've added head -1 to all definitions
of NIC1 in this commit
https://github.com/faiproject/fai/commit/3e434d0f9ecb7b9e3123058415e8d88cd6892b1d

So FAI 5.5 and later should include this fix.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Adding ROS repos

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 15 Mar 2018 00:48:27 -0300, Davinder Chandhok 
>  said:

> I am attempting to include the ROS repos to install packages from there 
on my
> client. I added entries to /etc/fai/apt/sources.list. Am I mistaken? 
Also, can
> I use the following command to add the keys?
That's the correct file you need to edit. Have a look at the log
files, if some other sources.list will be copied before starting
installing the packages.

> sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 
--recv-key 421C365BD9FF1F717815A3895523BAEEB01FA116
No, just download the key into a file for e.g. ROS.asc and put this
file into package_config/ROS.asc. FAI will the use it.

> And I tried to run a bash script I wrote to download miniconda and run it 
to
> install it, but even chmod +x responds with permission denied. Would it be
> better for me to run these commands after the system boots for the first 
time?
maybe chmod a+rx

> I apologize for these newbie questions. I am trying to learn how to work 
with
> FAI (almost out of university).
No problem.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Installing Packages (e.g. docker-ce) from a 3rd Party Repository

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 13:18:23 -0600, Itamar Gal  
> said:

> Here is my solution attempt. I decided to create an FAI class called 
DOCKER for this installation.

>     # Add the Docker repository
>     sudo add-apt-repository \
>     "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/$(. 
/etc/os-release; echo "$ID") \
>     $(lsb_release -cs) \
>     stable"
I guess this installs a source.list file on the host, but not into the
chroot where it must be.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: pip install

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 07 Mar 2018 08:06:36 -0600, John G Heim  
> said:

> Huh, maybe I don't understand the question. But can't the OP just run 
> pip install via ROOTCMD?
Yes this may be possible. I'm not sure which environment pip
needs. But this is a good idea to test it.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: pip install

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 07 Mar 2018 13:48:25 +0100, "BACHY Yann" 
>  said:

> Is there a native way in FAI to do something like this ?
No.

> Or should I create an self-destructing bash script which will only run at 
first boot of the machine ?
Yes, that's the way I would do it.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: i386 nfsroot - dracut depends error

[Thomas Lange]

First check your
/etc/fai/apt/sources.list
 ^^^
You should use the fai-project.org repo here.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: i386 nfsroot - dracut depends error

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 11:58:34 +0200, Martin Krämer  
> said:

> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  dracut: Depends: dracut-core (>= 047-2) but 044+241-3 is to be installed
> E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
My fault. I did not had the i386 package for dracut in my repository.
This is now fixed.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Additional repository keys

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 9 Apr 2018 15:45:58 +0200, Andreas Heinlein  
> said:

> Would it be possible to patch FAI to copy over .gpg files as well?
Yes. Do you like to create a patch for this?
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Non-X86 architectures?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 19 Apr 2018 10:04:12 +0200, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> is there anyone using FAI to install on architectures that are not X86*?
> (I had hacked some support for alpha more than a dozen years ago but those
> machines are long gone - I'm looking into arm64 and powerpc now but am 
open
> for almost anything beyond Intel/AMD.)
fai-diskimage is already used for arm64. Have a look at 
https://git.linaro.org/ci/fai.git

-- 
regards Thomas

RE: [External] Re: GRUB EFI blues - Debian 9/FAI 5.3.6

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:55:13 +, Bob Apodaca 
>  said:

> if test -d /sys/firmware/efi ; then
> echo GRUB_EFI
> fi
I've added this now to class/60-misc.

-- 
regards Thomas

RE: [External] Re: GRUB EFI blues - Debian 9/FAI 5.3.6

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 18 Apr 2018 20:13:13 +, Bob Apodaca 
>  said:

> At this point, I think getting GRUB to install is the main issue. If I 
could get FAI to create GRUB_EFI that would be wonderful as well.
The FAI classes are defined in class/. By default FAI defines the
class GRUB_PC if the architecture is i386 or amd64. You should try to
change this to GRUB_EFI in class/60-misc.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: FAI splash screen / GUI

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 27 Mar 2018 23:35:27 +0200, Christian Meyer  said:

> Is there a way to hide FAI messages during installation and just show
> an nice looking image or animation (e.g. just showing the current
> task)?
First remove verbose from the FAI_FLAGS. When you will much less text
I would use chvt in a hook, which selects another terminal. On this
terminal you could show whatever text you like, maybe using dialog. A
long time ago, I wrote some code for a text based progress indicator
using the dialog command and parsing messages from the fai-monitor.
Not release ready, and only the blue text boxes.

I you have framebuffer support, you can also show ads ;-)
FAI is selling ad space on each installation!

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Re: Adding ROS repos (Thomas Lange)

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:21:23 -0300, Davinder Chandhok 
>  said:

> This resolved the permissions, but I now it does not access python or 
conda. Maybe I don't have the right directory or path set?
Do you get any error message?

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: FAI.me service now supports creation of VM disk images

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 08:43:30 +1300, Andrew Ruthven  
> said:

> But it currently downloads the compressed file and stores the
> compressed file, it doesn't even try to decompress it.
I would call this a bug in openstack. It should be so clever to
decompress such an image. Uploading an uncompressed image is wasting
much bandwidth. Nice to see that FAI.me helps you a lot.

-- 
regards Thomas

fai-project.org downtime

[Thomas Lange]

There may be a downtime of all fai-project.org domains tomorrow (sat)
from 8am to 2pm local time (CET) due to some work on our power
supply.  I will get some USV, but I'm not sure if everything will work
as expected.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Several Questions

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 27 Feb 2018 22:29:37 +1300, Andrew Ruthven  
> said:

> Any chance of setting some default createopts from an environment
> variable? I use generic disk_configs, like QEMU_GUEST for any distro if
> an VM is being built. It'd be nice to not have to special case all the
> Ubuntu >= XENIAL distros.
No. Current the only way to do this, is to generate the disk_config on
the fly during installation. You may use a hook to call sed for
editing your disk_config.

-- 
regards Thomas

FAI 5.6

[Thomas Lange]

The new FAI release 5.6 includes following important change:

  * When installing the package fai-server, use the repository
from fai-project.org by default for building the nfsroot
  * fai-make-nfsroot: support ED25519 instead of DSA keys

New packages are available in Debian unstable and in the repository of
the FAI project. This version is still working on Debian stretch.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Alternatives in package_lists?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 17:34:23 +0200, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> Is it possible to specify "a | b" in a package_config file, so that "a"
> gets installed if available, and "b" otherwise?
FAI only creates a long list of package names and then calls apt-get,
aptitude or apt. If one of those tools provides a function like install
a if available or b otherwise, then FAI cloud use it. FAI itself does
not have this function yet. Patches are welcome ;-)

I wonder if any of the config management tools provides such a function?
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: variable names in FAI

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:10:46 +0200, Martin Krämer  
> said:

> Looking at https://wiki.fai-project.org/index.php/Variables I am 
wondering if there is some logic behind the naming of the variables within FAI?
> When is a variable written in uppercase, when in lowercase?
> When is a _ (underscore) used to split two words in a variable and when 
not?
The variable names evolved during almost 20 years of FAI.
There's not strict rule for the names, but IIRC
the lower case names should be more internal variables which are
normally not used in the config space.

FAI_ was not used much in the beginning, but later I've tried to use
it more to avoid clashes with other shell variables.

Sometimes I also think renaming the variables would be good, but I
fear to break a lot of users config spaces.

Maybe FAI-ng (to be released after 2038) will use a better naming scheme ;-)

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Network interface names

[Thomas Lange]

Have a look at this script
https://github.com/faiproject/fai-config/blob/master/scripts/DEBIAN/30-interface

Does this help you?
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: netplan support

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 17 Oct 2018 15:05:18 +0200, Robert Markula  
> said:

> Two questions arose so far:

> 1. Is the 'UBUNTU' class intended to be complementing the 'DEBIAN' class
> or does it completely replace the DEBIAN class?
yes, it is complementing the Debian class.

> 2. Ubuntu 18.04 now uses a different network configuration utility
> called 'netplan' [1]. However, I don't see support for that in the
Have a look at
https://lists.uni-koeln.de/pipermail/linux-fai/2018-May/012019.html
Derek already wrote some code to generate netplan configs.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Issue with dracut 048 and Ubuntu

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 20:31:28 +1300, Andrew Ruthven  
> said:

> The nfsroot: Stretch, FAI 5.7.2 and initially dracut 048.
> The server: Ubuntu Trusty (I know), with FAI 5.3.2 from the FAI PPA.

> The root cause of my issue was that fai-make-nfsroot bailed out of
> building my nfsroot because of this error:
> mount: mount point /srv/fai/nfsroot.stretch/dev/pts does not exist

Hi Andrew,

is this a trusty nfsroot or a Debian nfsroot on a trusty server? Maybe
send the fai-make-nfsroot.log to me.
I've checked all Debian and Ubuntu basefiles I've created (using a
debootstrap on a Debian machine) and they always include /dev/pts. Maybe
the debootstrap on trusty do not create /dev/pts inside the nfsroot.

> This might just be an issue on Trusty, not sure, but Thomas, what do
> you think about adding that mkdir -p?
I can do this, but I would like to know if debootstrap on Ubunu causes
this issue.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: nfsroot with kernel 3.X vs 4.X and kernel tftp options

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 12:03:24 +0200, Rémy Dernat  said:

> If I use a kernel 3.X (3.16.0-6-amd64) created with another fai server, 
my clients boot fine, but if I try to create a kernel 4.9.0-8, my clients
> are always stuck in a "read only file system" error ( The exact error 
message is the same than this one: 
With the 3.x kernel FAI is using aufs as an kernel commandline
option. This activates the aufs (another overlay fs). 4.X does not
include aufs any more but instead is has overlayfs. The kernel cmdline
must be different. Please use fai-chboot for generating the pxe config
file.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Including other signed Debian repositories (with https)

[Thomas Lange]

> On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 10:08:57 +0200, Christian Meyer  said:

> I wanted to add my own (signed) Debian repository to get some
> customized packages in my FAI-installations.
Do you want to install the packages into the nfsroot or install them
on the install clients?

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI issues booting into FAI sysinfo on Dell PowerEdge

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 3 Sep 2018 15:34:34 +0200, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

>> I suggest you to retrieve the version of SYSLINUX 6.04; look here for 
more
>> informations :
>> 
https://groups.google.com/a/lbl.gov/forum/#!msg/warewulf/klTLgX-L4nw/IJZo3-jgAAAJ

Now I rembember that not the BIOS update fixed my Thinkpad problem,
but using a newer syslinux.efi from syslinux 6.04 was the proper fix.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI issues booting into FAI sysinfo on Dell PowerEdge

[Thomas Lange]

>>>>> On Mon, 3 Sep 2018 15:31:44 +0200, Steffen Grunewald 
>>>>>  said:

> On Mon, 2018-09-03 at 14:44:54 +0200, Thomas Lange wrote:
> I remember that the "legacy" sysinfo run also took a long while to get 
started,
> so it might be hardware-specific.
If the boot/startup process of FAI takes a long time, it's maybe this issue:
https://github.com/faiproject/fai/commit/42abe35ed4d5a8c6f63e3bd334f4ab7339e

Without this fix, rsyslogd may need a long time to start is some situations.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: UEFI issues booting into FAI sysinfo on Dell PowerEdge

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 3 Sep 2018 14:26:49 +0200, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> After finding how to distinguish between BIOS and UEFI PXE requests, and
> setting up the DHCP/TFTP server accordingly, it was only "yet another 
step"
> to find and add ldlinux.e64 to get the machine booting.
I use syslinux.efi in the dhcpd.conf for UEFI machines. I have
syslinux.efi and ldlinux.e64 in my tftp directory. Then I can use the
same syntax in the pxelinux.cfg files as before.

> /var/log/daemon shows both requests and nothing more after them.
I had problems with a broken UEFI Bios on a Thinkpad. Upgrading the
BIOS fixed the issue for me.
I would try another machine using UEFI.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: FAI abort triggered

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 20 Sep 2018 17:14:58 +0200, Sebastiaan Dewilde 
>  said:

> Hello,
> We've been using FAI for many years now and we've now encountered an 
unknown problem in our setup. Namely before starting
> the actual FAI installation the install triggers the fai-abort.

Did you rebuild the FAI nfsroot?
What have you changed in your setup?
Which FAI version?

> [ 18.241159] dracut: Switching root 
> INIT: version 2.88 booting 
> Please give more parameters if not run from the nfsroot. 
I'm pretty sure your nfsroot is broken.

You can paste the your fai-make-nfsroot.log to paste.debian.net and
I'll have a look at it.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Installing dracut on the install client

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 22 Jan 2019 23:10:06 +0100, Robert Markula  
> said:

> anyone succeeded in installing dracut on a Debian stretch client using 
FAI?
I'm installing all my machines using dracut. I have this line in my
package_config file:

dracut initramfs-tools-

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: fai-setup: E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/.

[Thomas Lange]

> On Wed, 23 Jan 2019 14:51:31 +0100, Fabian Keil 
>  said:

> I'm trying to setup FAI on Debian GNU/Linux 8 i386 using
> fai-server 5.3.6~bpo8+1.

> fai-setup -v fails with:
>After this operation, 312 MB of additional disk space will be used.
>E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/.
>ERROR: 25600 25600
Try df -i to see if enough inodes are available on /srv.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: A couple of questions about deploying opensuse 42.3 via FAI

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 11:28:40 +, Matteo Guglielmi 
>  said:

> using 'mk-basefile' and some modified rinse files in /etc/rinse and
> /usr/lib/rinse.
It would be nice to submit the patches for rinse to me or to the
Debian bug tracking system.

> Is it possible to have dbus working when using $CHROOTCMD in FAI?
Not sure. One thing we do not do in FAI is starting any daemons inside
the chroot environment. Until now we had no problems using this approach.

> Is it a problem if dbus is not running in the chroot environment?
Do you have any problems because dbus is not running?

> 2)
> The 'mk_zerofree_list' function defined in the 'subroutines' file is
> failing when installing opensuse 42.3.

> Apparently the shell being used is not bash but dash.
> But, isn't FAI using the /bin/sh file of the nfsroot?
/usr/sbin/fai is using /bin/bash in the first line, so I'm wondering
why is uses dash instead of bash.

> Because that /bin/sh points to /bin/bash in the nfsroot... so, which
> shell (I mean which binary) is using FAI for all its functions?
FAI must use bash.



P.S.: I'm always very interested in user experiences with FAI. Can you
please fill out the FAI questionnaire
http://fai-project.org/questionnaire
and send it back to me when you finished a project with FAI.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: A couple of questions about deploying opensuse 42.3 via FAI

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:58:10 +, Matteo Guglielmi 
>  said:

> I built a server which can actually install all
> these distros from scratch:

Wow, a nice list of distributions.

> If you have a place (email?) where I can upload all
> this, I would be glad to share it with the community.
You can use the FAI wiki

> I would also let you submit the patches for I don't
> know how to do that.
The best would be if you have git patches against the original sources
from

https://github.com/faiproject/fai
and
https://github.com/faiproject/fai-config


> Beside that,
> I would still like to find out why I get that error
> message when installing openSUSE 42.3.
You mean this one?
> /bin/sh: mk_zerofree_list: line 16: syntax error near unexpected token 

I really wonder why this is not using bash.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: how to diagnose installed FAI server

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 16:33:59 +0100, "e.fernb...@gmx.net" 
>  said:

> When connecting a client with PXE boot (Realtex PXE B04 D00) it shows
> the DHCP ... and a circling I for a while then PXE exits with the "boot
> failure" message.
I think you need to debug some networking problem.

Did you enable tftp on the server? Do a DHCP is running in this
subnet?


Have a look at
7.3.1. Debugging the network traffic


> How do I further diagnose this? Can I somehow test if the server tries
> to issue an IP?
tcpdump is your friend.


> What configuration does the ethernet card of the system
> running the FAI server have to have?
No special config. Just an IP address, and your dhcpd.conf should use
this network card and must be configured for this subnet.

-- 
regards Thomas

Getting closer but no cigar yet, Re: Install ZFS root with FAI?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:41:37 +0100, Steffen Grunewald 
>  said:

> Is there a trick in FAI to force an installation order?
FAI itself does only create long list of package names that are then
feed to apt, aptitude or apt-get. These tools then decide in which
order to install the packages. In install_packages we define in
which order the package tools are called.

our @commands = qw/ . install install-norec aptitude aptitude-r./;

That means first apt-get is called with the list of packages under a
"PACKAGES install" section from package_config, then apt-get
--no-install-recommends (PACKAGES install-norec), then aptitude,

You could list some package in the sections for apt-get (line PACKAGES install)
and list other packages in other sections.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Issue Stretch nfsroot on Trusty

[Thomas Lange]

> On Sat, 01 Dec 2018 09:40:24 +1300, Andrew Ruthven  
> said:

> Cool, thank you. But, it does occur to me that this'll only help if the
> PPA for Ubuntu is updated. ;)
It's a pitty that currently noone updates the PPA. I did several times
a call for help but still it's very hard to find people that work on
the Ubuntu versions of FAI.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Issue Stretch nfsroot on Trusty

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 13:37:47 +1300, Andrew Ruthven  
> said:

> This is building a stretch nfsroot on a trusty server.

> I've just run debootstrap manually as:

> sudo debootstrap stretch test http://debian.catalyst.net.nz/debian

> I: Retrieving Release 
> I: Retrieving Packages 
> I: Validating Packages
> ...
> puck@trusty_server:~$ ls -l test/dev/pts
> ls: cannot access test/dev/pts: No such file or directory
> puck@trusty_server:~$ 

> And building a jessie debootstrap, dev/pts does exist within it.
OK, I will just add the mkdir into FAI. I guess an older deboostrap
version does not create this device.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: /target/boot not getting mounted correctly during install

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 17:21:18 +0100, Robert Markula  
> said:

> There seems to be a race condition in task_mountdisks for this specific
> situation:

> 
> Calling task_mountdisks
> Mounting UUID=5fb71b06-e912-43c8-b6ec-06d39178b033 to /target/boot
> Mounting UUID=324068ad-fcd7-432b-adc0-9fe1bc473864 to /target/
What is the order of /target/boot and /target in /tmp/fai/fstab during
the installation or /var/log/fai/local/host/last/fstab after the installation?
The script mount2dir just reads this file and mounts the partitions.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Lenovo M720S boot problem

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:07:33 +0100, Nicolas Renault - OPENinfo 
>  said:

> I forget to add lib/modules/4.15.0-29-generic  to the nfsroot.
> now final problems ( I think) :
> the FAI cannot create /tmp/fai and /target filesystem is read only 
Please check if the Ubuntu kernel 4.15 also includes the overlayfs
kernel module. FAI needs this but I'm not sure if Ubuntu supports this.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Installation over serial console : menu of profile not working as expected

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 19 Nov 2018 22:02:44 -0300, Sébastien Grenier  
> said:

> I suspect the problem is with this script...
> 
https://github.com/faiproject/fai-config/blob/master/class/40-parse-profiles.sh

I also think that the problem is there.
Can you try to write the value of the variable $out (which is the
output of the command tty) to a file and see if it is set correctly?

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: AW: AW: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

> On Mon, 7 Jan 2019 15:25:34 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:

> New one, dosent work:

> lsinitramfs  initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64 |grep -i nfs
> sbin/fsck.nfs
Is this the initrd from inside the nfsroot?

This is my output:

> lsinitrd /srv/fai//nfsroot/boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64 |grep nfs
Image: /srv/fai//nfsroot/boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64: 29M
nfs

etc/modprobe.d/nfs.conf
lib/dracut/hooks/cleanup/99-nfsroot-cleanup.sh
lib/dracut/hooks/cmdline/90-parse-nfsroot.sh
lib/dracut/hooks/pre-udev/99-nfs-start-rpc.sh
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/blocklayout
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/blocklayout/blocklayoutdriver.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs_common
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs_common/grace.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs_common/nfs_acl.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/filelayout
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/filelayout/nfs_layout_nfsv41_files.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/flexfilelayout
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/flexfilelayout/nfs_layout_flexfiles.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/nfs.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/nfsv2.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/nfsv3.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/nfsv4.ko
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/objlayout
lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64/kernel/fs/nfs/objlayout/objlayoutdriver.ko
lib/nfs-lib.sh
lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnfsidmap
lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnfsidmap/nsswitch.so
lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnfsidmap.so.0.3.0
lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnfsidmap.so.0 -> libnfsidmap.so.0.3.0
lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnfsidmap/static.so
lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnfsidmap/umich_ldap.so
sbin/fsck.nfs
sbin/mount.nfs
sbin/mount.nfs4 -> mount.nfs
sbin/nfsroot
var/lib/nfs
var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs
var/lib/nfs/statd
var/lib/nfs/statd/sm

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: AW: AW: AW: AW: AW: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 09:07:14 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:

> Sorry.
> At the Debain Bug Tracker for dracut, i read a bug ticket which discusses 
the warning " ignored null byte in input " with dracut an bash 4.4
> as i remember you wrote that this ist solved in current dracut version.
The next dracut version does add two more packages (dracut-squash,
dracut-live) which makes it difficult to prepare it for Debian 9
(stretch). Maybe I will only provide a newer dracut package for Debian 10.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: AW: AW: AW: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 08:20:00 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:


> lsinitramfs /srv/tftp/fai/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64 | grep -i nfs
> sbin/fsck.nfs

I use lsinitrd, not lsinitramfs

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: AW: AW: AW: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

I use the same fai-make-nfsroot version. I have these dracut modules
in my initrd:


dracut modules:
bash
network
ifcfg
url-lib
dm
dmsquash-live
kernel-modules
kernel-network-modules
livenet
overlay-root
qemu
qemu-net
lunmask
nfs
rootfs-block
terminfo
udev-rules
base
fs-lib
img-lib


livenet is missing.


-- 
regards Thomas

Re: AW: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 4 Jan 2019 07:32:16 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:

> According to 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Dracut/Options#Dracut_kernel_command_line_parameters
> and
> https://people.redhat.com/harald/dracut.html#NetworkBoot

> we need pakage " dracut-network" for dracut with nfs
You need dracut-network only inside the nfsroot not on the host itself.

-- 
regards Thomas

Re: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

> On Thu, 3 Jan 2019 14:52:34 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:

> fai-chboot -v -I  -F -s4.9.0-8-amd64 -u nfs://fai.fai.scm/srv/fai/config  
default

> Booting with it result in an dracut error:
> dracut Warning: dracut: FATAL: Don't know hoe to handle 
'root=/srv/fai/nfsroot.stretch:vers=3'
Maybe dracut is confused because you did not specified the IP of the
server but an NFS option.
Concerning to the man page dracut.cmdline this should work, but maybe
you've found a bug in dracut.

You can enable debugging, by adding rd.debug to the kernel cmdline.

-- 
regards Thomas

FAI 5.7.3

[Thomas Lange]

The new version of FAI is available. It includes a some changes in
setup-storage. It you use luks during partitioning, the cipher is not
set by FAI, but the default of cryptsetup is used. Before FAI set it
to aes-cbc-essiv:sha256, currently the default of cryptsetup is
aes-xts-plain64.

I've also created new ISO images of all versions of the FAI CD.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: manually restarting install?

[Thomas Lange]

> On Fri, 04 Jan 2019 09:43:42 -0600, John G Heim  
> said:

> If the config space fails to mount during an install, can I restart the 
> install by hand after manually mounting the config space?
I never tried this, I always call faireboot.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Problem with setup-storage preserving an existing LVM over RAID volume

[Thomas Lange]

It will take some effort to debug this.


The initrd (created by dracut) may also detect and active softraid and
lvm. I'm not sure if this really happens. I remember that we already
had some issue with raid or lvm activated by dracut and then
setup-storage could handle this later on.

BTW, which FAI version? This is also important.


> On Fri, 04 Jan 2019 18:43:13 +0100, Christian Meyer  said:

> Hello there,
> doing my fist server-lessions, I'm facing two problems with setup-
> storage.
> This one is about preserving an existing LVM over RAID volume.

> I managed to install an lvm over two raid volumes (md1 and md2) with
> FAI and the first disk_config line (now #-ed).
> In the second run I try to preserve partitions, md's and lv's, but I'm
> getting an error telling me to file a bug report. (I rather think it's
> a problem with configuration and/or my customized configspace. BTW: I
> don't do anything with mdadm or lv* in class/*)

> Obviously Parser.pm complains about an "uninitialized value $this_mp",
> but I found the syntax of "disk_config ..." in the mailing list archive
> and have no glue what it could mean.

> Is the problem anyway related with "WARNING: Failed to connect to
> lvmetad." or missing commands in my class/* or hook/* ?

> Previously there has been a problem reinstalling the complete RAID/LVM,
> but this I could fix by calling:
> # lvremove /dev/vg_guests/*
> # mdadm --stop /dev/md*
> # mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd*
> But since I want to keep my VMs, this is not what I want to do.


> Thanks a lot for your help.

> Christian


> The error says:
> # 
> # setup-storage -f /var/lib/fai/config/disk_config/KVM
> setup-storage is running in test-only mode
> Starting setup-storage 2.0
> Using config file: /var/lib/fai/config/disk_config/KVM
> Use of uninitialized value $this_mp in string eq at
> /usr/share/fai/setup-storage/Parser.pm line 1225, <$config_file> line
> 1.
> Use of uninitialized value $this_mp in hash element at
> /usr/share/fai/setup-storage/Parser.pm line 1226, <$config_file> line
> 1.
> Use of uninitialized value $this_mp in string eq at
> /usr/share/fai/setup-storage/Parser.pm line 1230, <$config_file> line
> 1.
> Use of uninitialized value $this_mp in hash element at
> /usr/share/fai/setup-storage/Parser.pm line 1230, <$config_file> line
> 1.
> File descriptor 4 (/dev/tty2) leaked on vgdisplay invocation. Parent
> PID 4072: /usr/bin/perl
> File descriptor 63 (pipe:[14331]) leaked on vgdisplay invocation.
> Parent PID 4072: /usr/bin/perl
>   WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device
> scanning.
> File descriptor 4 (/dev/tty2) leaked on vgdisplay invocation. Parent
> PID 4072: /usr/bin/perl
> File descriptor 63 (pipe:[14331]) leaked on vgdisplay invocation.
> Parent PID 4072: /usr/bin/perl
>   WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device
> scanning.
> INTERNAL ERROR in setup-storage:
> convert_unit 1,81TiB
> Please report this error to the Debian Bug Tracking System.
>  at /usr/share/fai/setup-storage/Parser.pm line 379.
>   FAI::convert_unit("1,81TiB") called at /usr/share/fai/setup-
> storage/Volumes.pm line 416
>   FAI::get_current_lvm called at /usr/sbin/setup-storage line 167
> # 

> This is my disk_config/KVM
> # 
> # This is my disk_config/KVM
> # Disks:
> # ==
> # disk_config sda disklabel:msdos bootable:1 fstabkey:uuid
> disk_config sda disklabel:msdos bootable:1 fstabkey:uuid
> preserve_reinstall:3
> #        
> primary   -   10G -  -
> primary   swap2G  swap   sw
> primary   -   50G--  -

> disk_config sdb sameas:sda
> # disk_config sdc disklabel:msdos fstabkey:uuid
> disk_config sdc disklabel:msdos fstabkey:uuid preserve_reinstall:1
> primary   -   300G-  -  -
> disk_config sdd sameas:sdc

> # RAID:
> # =
> # disk_config raid fstabkey:uuid
> disk_config raid fstabkey:uuid preserve_reinstall:2,3
> raid1  /   sda1,sdb1ext4rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro
> raid1  -   sda3,sdb3-   -
> raid1  -   sdc1,sdd1-   -

> # LVM:
> # 
> # disk_config lvm fstabkey:uuid
> disk_config lvm fstabkey:uuid preserve_reinstall:vg_guests-1,vg_guests-
> 2,vg_guests-3,vg_guests-4
> vg vg_guests md1,md2
> vg_guests-1  - 50Gext4   rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro
> vg_guests-2  - 50Gext4   rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro
> vg_guests-3  - 50Gext4   

Re: AW: AW: AW: AW: nfsroot: dracut don't know to handle root=

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 08:54:45 +, "Schulz, Reiner"  
> said:

> without "-s" i got:

> Setting up dracut (048+80-1) ...
> /usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/45url-lib/module-setup.sh: line 33: warning: 
command substitution: ignored null byte in input
> dracut-install: ERROR: installing '/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt'
You can ignore these warnings.

> livenet
Here it is!

> At BTS you wrote the BASH thing should resolved??
I do not understand this.
-- 
regards Thomas

FAI 5.7.2

[Thomas Lange]

The new FAI version adds the option -y to setup-storage. This option
writes a disk_var.yml file which is the disk_var.sh in YAML
format. This option is not used by default.
-- 
regards Thomas

Re: Installing dracut on the install client

[Thomas Lange]

>>>>> On Sun, 27 Jan 2019 23:34:19 +0100, Robert Markula  
>>>>> said:

> Am 23.01.19 um 08:07 schrieb Thomas Lange:
>> > anyone succeeded in installing dracut on a Debian stretch client using 
FAI?
>> I'm installing all my machines using dracut. I have this line in my
>> package_config file:
>> 
>> dracut initramfs-tools-

> It seems that LVM is the culprit. Using dracut, as soon as the root
> filesystem resides on LVM, the system panics. However, using the exact
> same config, but with initramfs-tools instead of dracut, everything
> works as it should.
You need rd.auto as additional kernel cmdline parameter if you use LVM
for the root filesystem. See man dracut.cmdline for more info.

-- 
regards Thomas

FAI and Debian Buster (was Re: New ISO images available)

[Thomas Lange]

> On Tue, 2 Apr 2019 08:28:18 +0200, Andreas Heinlein  
> said:

> I don't really need ISO images, but if someone has been successful on
> installing buster with FAI, I'd be happy to hear.
I've done several buster installations for a client using buster.

> I am currently in the first testing stages, and I am having some trouble
> with grub and lvm2. It seems there are some new problems related to
> installing within a chroot. Problem is 1) that update-grub hangs forever
> and 2) lvm2 postinst hangs with error messages like "WARNING: Device
> /dev/sda1 not initialized in udev database even after waiting 1000
> microseconds."

> The first seems to be related to os-prober, the latter seems due to some
> changes in lvm2. I found posts on Arch Linux forums that suggest that
> you need /run/lvm available within the chroot, but it looks like it
> already is when installing with FAI.
This is already fixed in FAI 5.8.4.
I'm not sure if it also fixed the first one.

>From the changelog:
  * updatebase: mount /run/udev into /target, Closes: #925247

-- 
regards Thomas