Where is the official automated installer for Ubuntu, ie. FAI (Fully Automated Installer)

[Dustin]

Hi,

Is Ubuntu really ready for the enterprise? If so, where is the automated
installer (like Redhat's kickstart)?

I am the Unix Systems Administrator for Business Objects' Product Group. I
administer about 240 Unix servers of differing flavors: Redhat Enterprise, Suse
Enterprise, Solaris, HPUX, AIX. We have automated installers (such as Redhat's
kickstart and Suse's autoyast) set up for each of these to deploy new machines
quickly. A particular department of developers here wants to start developing
on a Desktop Linux, and were about to choose Fedora. I insisted on Ubuntu as
it's the most popular desktop Linux currently. I'm trying to set up FAI to
auto-install breezy, but the lack of these packages being available from Ubuntu
is holding me back (in my guessed order of importance):

cfengine
libnet-perl
libapt-pkg-perl
dialog
dump
raidtools2
jove
bootpc

I know FAI absolutely requires cfengine. The next 4 are probably required. The
last three seem optional. It is by running FAI's "fai-setup" script that these
lacking packages are revealed (as it tries to get additional packages, as
defined in make-fai-nfsroot.conf).

BTW: I've also been visiting this site, written by "Lazyboy", who is trying to
get FAI working unofficially with Ubuntu:
http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/Installing_Ubuntu_Linux_with_FAI

He's managed to get FAI working with Hoary but not Breezy, using some unnoficial
packages he's made. It is from here where I've gotten an FAI deb package that
is Hoary-friandly. I want to auto-install Breezy!

Can I please get these 8 packages (9 including fai itself) added to at least the
universe, if not the "main" colleciton packages? Think of all the Unbuntu
installs (not just at my company) that the lack of an automated installer is
holding back.

Cheers,

Dustin Harriman

[Xavier Claessens (zdra)]

All packages are in ubuntu since warty ! don't understand your problem.

[Johann Petrak (johann-petrak)]

I agree with the subject of this thread: there should be an official way for automated preconfigured installs.

At least, it might be a good idea to get kickstart to work under Ubuntu (see bug #15156)

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in fai.

FAI seems to have been packaged almost if not since the beginning of Ubuntu, see:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=fai&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&release=all

These are under the universe component, please read universe in:
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/components

To be able to get those software in universe, you used to have to enable them, please read:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories
but I am pretty sure Universe is now selected by default.

Is it what you were searching?

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

Paul Dufresne wrote:
> FAI seems to have been packaged almost if not since the beginning of Ubuntu, see:
> http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=fai&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&release=all
>

Yes, but it's also true that it did not work well and nice until dapper,
when I think, Reinhard Tartler started working on this.

I am the "Lazyboy" mentioned in this bug report, but my work goes only
into "installing Ubuntu from a Debian FAI Server" - as opposed to
"running a FAI SErver on Ubuntu, installing Ubuntu".
Ubuntu is only used as a Desktop OS for me, so I stopped working on FAI
running on Ubuntu when I saw it was too hard and no one cared anyway
(see below).

I think, unless the reporter states that this bug still exists, this can
be closed (it's mentioned that it's for breezy).

The question of general/full FAI support in Ubuntu, and making FAI the
official auto-Installer for Ubuntu seems another one, with an
political/informal background.
We(the FAI developers team) offered Canonical/Ubuntu to help getting FAI
better supported on Ubuntu, but no one seemed to be interested. It
seemed that they are content with the kickstart "workaround/config
converter" and with d-i preseeding(which, in my opinion fails, as soon
as you have more complex setups, and need to set more stuff which isn't
foreseen in debconf questions by the maintainer).

The upsides of using FAI are quite easy to see:
- class-based configs, so system classes can be combined at your wish
- multiple install mehtods: network install, install into directory(for
xen/chroots/other virtualization systems), and cd installs
- multiple distributions installable from one server: we currently have
the possibility to install (even different versions of) debian, ubuntu,
redhat, suse, and there is work going on to get even windows installed.

So, it should not be hard to see the upsides of this against
preseeding/kickstart - only a decision to set on this mature and
flexible technology would be required :)

Henning

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

Thanks for your report. Your idea might get more attention and have the possibility of being implemented if you submit a specification for it. First check whether the idea is already registered https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+specs, and if so, contact the specification's drafter about your ideas. Otherwise, you can start writing a spec yourself. [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications

Atm, only very few ppl are actively working on getting fai working in ubuntu properly. I intend to work on getting fai for gutsy in shape the next week, but in order to get it enterprise grade and rock solid, a lot more manpower is needed. Canonical has currently no plans to support FAI in ubuntu for various reason. So this remains a community efford.

For the scope of this bugreport, I'm rejecting this bug, because the request cannot be fulfilled at this time. A lot of more preparation is needed. If someone feels interested in actively hacking on it, please contact me and/or the FAI mailing list. We could perhaps form a launchpad group to share patches and manage the bugreports in ubuntu. I indeed have some plans for ubuntu gutsy, but as I currently don't have a real use for FAI, my time is quite limited.

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> [...]
> Atm, only very few ppl are actively working on getting fai working in
> ubuntu properly. I intend to work on getting fai for gutsy in shape the
> next week, but in order to get it enterprise grade and rock solid, a lot
> more manpower is needed.

To define "a lot" a bit clearer, I'd say, yes, it's nearly a full time
job for one person to constantly keep auch an installer framework
playing nice with every new release and even keep supporting the LTS
releases.

I don't think it needs more than that one person(assuming the person
knows FAI well), and in a full time job, this person would have enough
time to get some new features added Ubuntu users might be interested in
like a GUI and a wizard to get initial setup of a FAI Server done easier.

As for "enterprise grade" and "rock solid" - I think FAI is both, but it
depends on the definition :)

> Canonical has currently no plans to support FAI
> in ubuntu for various reason. So this remains a community effort.

As for you, my time is also limited, and I don't use Ubuntu on servers.
Still, I can at least help with the conceptual side.
It would still require some more people really interested and testing
this stuff in their production environments.

>
> For the scope of this bugreport, I'm rejecting this bug, because the
> request cannot be fulfilled at this time.

Yes, you won't fix a bug for breezy anymore...

> We could perhaps form a
> launchpad group to share patches and manage the bugreports in ubuntu. I
> indeed have some plans for ubuntu gutsy,

I'll look at the pages you mentioned these days - that might be the
place where we could write down some thoughts on how FAI could be made
even easier to use and show up ways how FAI can be used an integrated on
Ubuntu.

For the time being, the link to "see the url for this specification" on
the page
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/automated-installation
gets me to a "forbidden" error message...

Henning