Re: d-i, FAI, quik-installer for oldworld, debconf4
Holger Levsen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > > When d-i is working better for my hardware (which means oldworld and
> > > newworld installs and boots without problems) I want to take parts of d-i
> > > and integrate them into FAI replacing some scripts FAI uses. But I'm not
> > > sure how to do this now: (how) can I install .udebs onto a normal debian
> > > system (the nfsroot used by FAI) ?
> >
> > Not at all. .udebs are installer modules, not packages. The installer
> > fetches them from a (local) mirror and fills a ramdisk with them. They
> > won't work in a normal Debian system.
>
> Ok.
>
> FAI consists of two parts: arch-independent scripts and other class files and
> a arch-dependent nfsroot-filesystem for the installation clients.
I'm familiar with the FAI architecture.
> the nfsroot
> is just a plain debian base system installed via debootstrap plus some fai
> scripts.
The nfsroot (and some parts of FAI) would be replaced by the installer's
initrd, FAI will get a pristine base install from it and can then do its
own stuff for system configuration.
> one perl-script handles partitioning (for i386, ia64 and sparc) now
> and I want this script to instead call partman somehow. partman (which is
> also arch-dependent) has to be installed inside the nfsroot. how can I do
> this ? (I will gladly install dependencies...)
You'd have to package some equivalent sh-script in a .udeb which runs
early in the installer and seeds the appropriate values in the debconf
db. So the start is to create a custom installer image which contains
this fai-config.udeb.
> Does partman work with DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive ?
Yes, if the debconf values are already set properly.
> Then I'll only have to
> find a way to transform FAI's disk_config files to partman's recipes and as a
> result I will get a partitioning tool which will work on all debian archs.
>
> Then, the boot-loader-install stuff is the next interesting area where FAI
> could gain from d-i.
This would work the same way. Seed the debconf values and run the installer
at critical priority. You may want to have a look at the skolelinux stuff,
they do automated woody installs with the installer.
Thiemo
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