FAI - Fully Automatic Installation

• http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/

aptitude install fai-quickstart

1. Edit /etc/fai/fai.conf and /etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
   1. Don't forget to adjust FAI_DEBOOTSTRAP to use your preferred (local) Debian mirror.
2. Edit /etc/fai/apt/sources.list
3. run fai-setup

When you make changes to fai.conf, make-fai-nfsroot.conf the nfsroot has to be rebuilt by calling make-fai-nfsroot.

/etc/default/tftpd-hpa

#Defaults for tftpd-hpa
RUN_DAEMON="yes"
#OPTIONS="-l -s /var/lib/tftpboot"
OPTIONS="-l -s /srv/tftp/fai"

Change path to match fai requirements and enable daemon

dhcpd
Hint: it's not necessary to run dhcpd on the faiserver itself. You may use your existing one and add the following:

[...]
 # PXE-Boot (FAI)
    group {
      next-server 192.168.0.197 ;
      use-host-decl-names on;
      filename "pxelinux.0";
      host vm-demohost.example.com { hardware ethernet 00:0c:29:e3:de:a7; fixed-address vm-demohost.example.com;
    }

[...]

Setup what should be done for each client you want to install automatically.

Enable the install process for a specific client:

fai-chboot -FIv vm-demohost

That will create a bootfile:

# /srv/tftp/fai/pxelinux.cfg/C0A84D92
# generated by fai-chboot for host vm-faitb with IP 192.168.77.146
default fai-generated

label fai-generated
kernel vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-486
append initrd=initrd.img-2.6.26-2-486 ip=dhcp  root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/srv/fai/nfsroot boot=live  FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt FAI_ACTION=install

List the install candidates:

fai-chboot -l 

vm-demohost                 C0A84D93             install vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-486

disable an install candidate:

fai-chboot -dv vm-demohost