[debian-lan-devel] Getting demohost back to work.

[Andreas B. Mundt]

Hello Andreas,

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 11:25:33AM +0100, Andreas Schockenhoff wrote:
>
> after installing a debian Lan mainserver form the CD.
> debian-lan_wheezy_2NICs_20130326_amd64.iso <http://das-netzwerkteam.de/%7Eandi.mundt/debian-lan_wheezy_2NICs_20130326_amd64.iso>
>
> I would like to have the demohost (form fai) back to work. I  have
> nameserver problems during booting and after I fix this with a fixed IP
> I have nameserver problem with apt.

First, I have to say that I never tested all the FAI-uptream hosts.
The machines customized and tested for Debian-LAN are 'mainserver',
'diskless*' and 'workstation*'.  All the other machines are left over
from the FAI upstream example -- I kept them for reference (perhaps
this is confusing), but never tested nor tried to make them working.

> Any simple solution?

If you want to install for example the 'demohost', I would add the
machines MAC to the DHCP server attributing 'demohost' to the machine.
Then you need to create a corresponding PXE configuration for
'demohost' with fai-chboot.

Now it should be possible to PXE boot the 'FAI installer'.  However, I
guess the machine will be of not much use in the Debian-LAN network,
as it does not know anything about the mainserver and its services.

> Also form the CD the demohost does not work anymore. That seams to
> be a bug in fai. But debian lan installation works. May be we work
> around it also until the problem is upstream.

Again, I kept the hosts on the CD for reference, but never tested
anything there, except the mainserver.  Perhaps it's better to remove
all these entries?

> As I looked for this problem I wondered if it would be simple to give
> debian-lan his own config place like: /srv/fai/debian-lan-config? May be
> that is good for a cooperation with other fai installations.

I do not understand completely what you want to achieve -- the heart
of Debian-LAN is the 'mainserver'.  It includes all home directories,
LDAP, KDC and much more.  Clients are configured to use these
services.

If you already have a FAI installation running, all the authentication
stuff and centralized home dirs etc. must be already there.  So in
such a system neither the 'mainserver' nor the Debian-LAN client
machines will work.

However, you can use, perhaps customized, individual FAI classes from
the Debian-LAN config space and include them in your FAI
infrastructure.  But this of course is more involved than rolling out
a Debian-LAN with the defaults.

Perhaps you can elaborate a bit more on what you want to do?

Best regards,

     Andi