[debian-lan-devel] Install faiserver from debian-lan_jessie_20150516_amd64.iso

[Andreas B. Mundt]

Hi Richard,

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 10:10:14AM +0100, Richard C Hidalgo Lorite wrote:
> Hi, my fai office hardware system has crashed. I have a disk with restored
> accounts in a partition and I want to use that disk installing mainserver
> from the iso in other partition. is it possible? i'm worried about the fact
> that iso installation would accidentally erase my homes data.

The Debian-LAN FAI CD does not care about other partitions and will
repartition the system.  I suggest to use the "conversion" method for
installing in that case:

           https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN/bootstrap#Convert%20a%20Minimal%20Debian%20Installation
           [1] https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/debian-lan.git/plain/debian/README.Debian

This allows you to keep partitions and choose your preferred disk
setup.  Debian-LAN will only act on top of the disk layout prepared by
the Debian-Installer.  Of course you could prepare a customized CD
image which takes your system into account, but I guess this is more
complicated.

Regards,

        Andi



[1]
        Converting a minimal Debian installation
        ----------------------------------------

Install a minimal Debian (only the core system) on the server.  Choose
'mainserver' as hostname.  Prepare appropriate partitions, examples
are available in /usr/share/debian-lan-config/fai/config/disk_config/.

Then convert the installation with the following commands:

   apt-get install aptitude  # needed for FAI
   aptitude install debian-lan-config  # might be already installed
   aptitude -R install fai-server dialog  # no recommends needed
   mkdir /srv/fai/
   cp -r /usr/share/debian-lan-config/fai/config /srv/fai/

Adapt the config space to your needs if necessary and run FAI with the
variable CONVERT set to true:

   export SUDO_FORCE_REMOVE=yes  # to switch from sudo to sudo-ldap
   export CONVERT=true ; fai -vN -s file:///srv/fai/config/ softupdate

Further Notes
-------------

If you prefer not to use the hostname 'mainserver' but $HOSTNAME, use
the following commands to replace it in the fai config space:

   cd /srv/fai/config/
   for FILE in $(grep -rl mainserver *) ; \
       do sed -i "s/mainserver/$HOSTNAME/g" $FILE ; done

   mv files/etc/hosts/mainserver files/etc/hosts/$HOSTNAME
   cd -