NAME
fai - fully automatic installation
SYNOPSIS
fai [options] ACTION
fai [options] dirinstall DIRECTORY
DESCRIPTION
fai starts an fai-action, e.g. an installation or a softupdate. If the
variable FAI_ACTION is defined, this action will be performed. The
command line argument will override the value of FAI_ACTION. You can
also define your own actions which will be executed when specified.
OPTIONS
ACTION is required.
-C CFDIR
Use CFDIR as the configuration directory. Default is /etc/fai.
-c|--class class[,class]
Define classes. Multiple classes must be comma separated. If
not specified, use the shell environment variable $classes
(space separated). The first class has lowest priority.
-h|--help
Show help, version and summary of options.
-N|--new
Renew the list of defined classes. By default, FAI uses the list
of classes which was created during the first installation and
skips calling fai-class(1). You need this option for the first
softupdate if the system was not installed with FAI, you can
also use it in subsequent runs.
-s|--cspace <URL>
URL of the config space. See fai.conf for more information on
the format and which types of protocol are supported. This
overrides the setting of FAI_CONFIG_SRC in /etc/fai.
-u|--hostname <HOSTNAME>
Use this hostname instead the output of the hostname command.
This is useful in conjunction with the dirinstall action, where
you want to manually define a hostname that should be used for
defining classes and for the network setup and other stuff.
There, you don't want the name of the host where you run fai
dirinstall to be used - because programs in a chroot, or in a
virtualized OS instance should run with their own name, and
install their own set of classes.
-v|--verbose
Create verbose output.
ACTIONS
install
starts a fully automatic installation:
1. setup the fai environment (create ramdisk, get configuration
data,...)
2. define classes and variables
3. partition the local hard disk and create file systems
4. install new software packages
5. call configuration scripts
6. check and save the logfiles
sysinfo
starts a system rescue:
1. setup the fai environment (create ramdisk, get configuration
data,...)
2. define classes and variables
3. do different types of hardware detection and print hardware
info
4. save the logfiles
softupdate
starts a softupdate:
1. fetch FAI configuration according to /etc/fai/fai.conf
2. define classes and variables
3. update the installed packages
4. install new software
5. call configuration scripts
6. check and save the logfiles
dirinstall [DIR]
Installation into a directory. This is nearly the same action as
install except for skipping the task that partitions the hard
disks and creates the file systems. Classes can be defined with
option -c, or by giving the hostname with -u or --hostname and
enabling automatic definition by class scripts from hostname
with -N. (Without -N class scripts aren't executed)
NOTES
Running with action "install" on a running system will almost certainly
destroy it.
EXAMPLES
fai -v -s file:///srv/fai/config -cDEFAULT,FAIBASE dirinstall
/srv/etchroot
This command will do an installation into the directory /src/etchroot.
For defining variables, selecting the software packages and calling the
customization script the classes DEFAULT, FAIBASE and LAST are used.
SEE ALSO
This program is the central part of FAI (Fully Automatic Installation).
See the FAI manual for more information on how to use FAI. The FAI
homepage is http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai.
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Henning Glawe <glaweh@physik.fu-
berlin.de> and Thomas Lange <lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de>.