[Computerbank] Automatic Installation, anyone?

[Patrick Maslen]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 05:01:45PM +1100, Grant Diffey wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 01:27:58PM +1100, Patrick Maslen wrote:
> > There are a few packages out there which will perform an automatic install of Debian GNU/Linux. In particular there is a package called fai (fully automated installation). It is useful any time there are multiple machines to install with Linux in a similar configuration - it sounds very useful for Computerbank, as it would save on time and mistakes during installs. It seems appropriate because computerbank has a definite process which it follows to install Debian on its machines. Fai automates that process.
> problem is that it (fai) is very focused on hardware rollouts where the 
> machines are virtually identical this is not the case at computerbank
> where machines vary wildly from one to the next in terms of video
> and network configuration
> 
> FAI has been looked at in the past.. and the shortcommings described above
> were why we dismissed it

Hi Grant,

Fair enough. I thought it might be appropriate anyway because network and video cards are the main differences between computerbank machines, so it would be possible to write scripts to deal with/detect those differences (what about a hardware list generated by the ex-Prodigy tool Discover?; then feed the list to fai). All the rest of the installation process, which is currently a matter of following exact instructions, could be automated. That would save a lot of time and also incorrect installations.

I don't know fai all that well (I've never had reason to use it on a mass scale) but I have read some of the documentation. Its author argues that it is a useful package even for installing varying machines. I thought, if it was true, it could be very useful.

Anyway, if you have already examined it and rejected it, fair enough.

Patrick