Custom Distro

Joshua D. Abraham jabra at ccs.neu.edu
Mon Jan 30 15:09:01 EST 2006


On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 02:34:48PM -0500, Jon maddog Hall wrote:
> I was in a conference session last week with one of the developers of FAI,
> and it was the first time I had spent any time looking at it.  I was impressed
> with its flexibility and power.
> 
> It seems to me that FAI serves a slightly different purpose than a "Custom Distro
> Maker", although FAI could go a long way to simulating a "Custom Distro",
> given enough compatible packages in the pool.
> 
> To me a "Custom Distro Maker" puts together the right packages, complete with
> correct dependencies.  FAI takes that custom distro and makes sure that
> each and every package is set up how you want it on each and every computer.
> 
> FAI is the automated installation and sys admin tool.  "Custom Distro" is the
> tool of the distribution maker, although these days that could include system
> administrators in some cases.

 I am one of the admins of a the volunteer group called Crew at
 Northeastern University. We have built an entire Linux
 infarastructure( http://crew.ccs.neu.edu/wiki/?Linux/) and originally
 built our systems using FAI and Radmind. We used FAI to bootstrap the
 system and then Radmind to install the base of our system. FAI was a
 horrible thing to maintain because of the changes that needed to be
 made in updating for each new kernel version and the lack of good
 documentation by Thomas Lang. We are now using a scripted
 debian/ubuntu install which gets the systems running enough to call
 radmind to install the transcripts.

 Apparently there is a group working on a Windows version of FAI which
 scares me.

 I for one, think FAI is a good idea but bad implementation. 
 
 Regards,
 --Joshua Abraham

 


> 
> md
> -- 
> Jon "maddog" Hall
> Executive Director           Linux International(R)
> email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
> Voice: +1.603.672.4557       Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
> WWW: http://www.li.org
> 
> Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association
> 
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