FAI - fully automatic installation of Debian GNU/Linux

Thomas Lange lange at informatik.Uni-Koeln.DE
Thu Dec 14 03:11:03 PST 2000


Hi all,

I like to point out a new version of FAI, the fully automatic
installation for Debian GNU/Linux.

FAI is a non interactive system to install a Debian GNU/Linux
operating system on a PC cluster. You can take one or more virgin PCs,
turn on the power and after a few minutes Linux is installed,
configured and running on the whole cluster, without any interaction
necessary. Thus it's a scalable method for installing and updating a
cluster unattended with little effort involved. FAI uses the Debian
distribution and a collection of shell- and Perl-scripts for the
installation process. Changes to the configuration files of the
operating system are made by cfengine, shell and Perl scripts. Using
FAI, a fully automatic installation of a Linux cluster which consists
of 16 dual Pentium PC's was performed.

FAI's target group are system administrators how have to install
Debian onto one or even hundreds of computers. Because it's a general
purpose installation tool, it can be used for installing a beowulf
cluster, a rendering farm or a linux laboratory or a classroom. Also
large-scale linux networks with different hardware and different
installation requirements are easy to establish using FAI.

The homepage for FAI is:

http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/

-- 
 Thomas
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            Thomas Lange
Institut fuer Informatik        mailto:lange at informatik.Uni-Koeln.DE
   Universitaet zu Koeln
            Pohligstr. 1        Telefon: +49 221 470 5303
             50969 Koeln        Fax    : +49 221 470 5317

1024D/AB9B66FD AEA6 A8C1 BD8E 67C4 8EF6  8BCA DC13 E54E AB9B 66FD
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