FAI on Ubuntu 12.04
These notes are a work in progress and detail my installation of FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) on Ubuntu 12.04. I had some issues before realising I needed a 64bit client to install to (had PXE working then realised my client is 32bit only). This is worth noting as it’s most likely /VERY/ annoying to build a FAI server for a different architecture.
Also, be careful about doing this on an active network, as you can easily setup a rogue DHCP server which will make bad things happen.
Install the basic FAI packages:
apt-get install fai-quickstart
Add the following to /etc/exports:
/srv/fai/config (async,ro,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)
Edit: /etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
Change: FAI_DEBOOTSTRAP="squeeze http://cdn.debian.net/debian" To : FAI_DEBOOTSTRAP="precise http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu"
Do the initial debbootstrap, copy the sample dhcp server config into place.
sudo fai-setup /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server reload apt-get install isc-dhcp-server syslinux-common tftpd-hpa cp /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/etc/dhcpd.conf /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
add hosts to /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf similar to the example line already present:
host demohost {hardware ethernet 0:2:a3:b5:c5:41;fixed-address demohost;}
or remove:
deny unknown-clients;
to allow all clients
add a range if required under the subnet line, e.g.:
range 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.50;
edit /etc/default/tftpd-hpa:
CHANGE: TFTP_DIRECTORY="/var/lib/tftpboot" TO : TFTP_DIRECTORY="/srv/tftp"
and/or add the following in /etc/init/tftpd-hpa.conf :
env TFTP_DIRECTORY="/srv/tftp"
Install demo configuration files (this may not be required):
cp -a /usr/share/doc/fai-doc/examples/simple/* /srv/fai/config
Set permissions on kernel correctly:
chmod o+r /srv/tftp/fai/vmlinuz-3.2.0-36-generic
Edit: /srv/fai/config/files/boot/grub/menu.lst/postinst
Comment out as follows:
#$ROOTCMD grub-install --no-floppy $(device2grub $BOOT_DEVICE)
Edit, /srv/fai/config/scripts/GRUB/10-setup replace the entire contents as follows:
#! /bin/bash error=0 ; trap "error=$((error|1))" ERR # Eventual source the disk_var.sh just in case # the BOOT_DEVICE/BOOT_PARTITION/ROOT_PARTITION # variables are overwritten [ -r /tmp/fai/disk_var.sh ] && . /tmp/fai/disk_var.sh ifclass NOMBR && BOOT_DEVICE=$BOOT_PARTITION [ -z "$BOOT_DEVICE" ] && exit 701 [ -z "$BOOT_PARTITION" ] && exit 702 # call grub-install from ubuntu $target/usr/sbin/grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/$target $BOOT_DEVICE # call update-grub inside ubuntu chroot with special "no user questions" flag $ROOTCMD /usr/sbin/update-grub -y exit $error
Create: /srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg/default with the following contents:
Note, this currently boots to fai then tries to connect to the nfs server.
# Default boot option to use
DEFAULT x64
# Prompt user for selection
PROMPT 0
# Menu Configuration
MENU WIDTH 80
MENU MARGIN 10
MENU PASSWORDMARGIN 3
MENU ROWS 12
MENU TABMSGROW 18
MENU CMDLINEROW 18
MENU ENDROW 24
MENU PASSWORDROW 11
MENU TIMEOUTROW 20
MENU TITLE Main Menu
# Menus
LABEL x64
MENU LABEL x64
KERNEL vmlinuz-3.2.0-36-generic
APPEND initrd=initrd.img-3.2.0-36-generic ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/srv/fai/nfsroot boot=live FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt FAI_ACTION=install FAI_CONFIG_SRC=nfs://192.168.1.100/srv/fai/config
This config installs an Ubuntu system for me, but there appear to be bootloader issues (hopefully resolved now, testing).
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