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.TH fai 8 "December 2013" "FAI 4"

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.SH NAME

fai \- Fully Automatic Installation

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B fai

.RI [ options ] " ACTION"

.br

.B fai

.RI [ options ] " dirinstall DIRECTORY"

.br

.B fai

.RI [ options ] " install DIRECTORY"

.SH DESCRIPTION

FAI allows for non-interactive

initial installation and online maintenance ("softupdates") of operating systems

according to a user-defined configuration.

.LP

fai starts an fai-action, e.g. an installation or a softupdate.

If the variable FAI_ACTION is defined, this action will be

performed. The command line argument will override the value of

FAI_ACTION. You can also define your own actions which will be

executed when specified.

.SH OPTIONS

.TP

ACTION is required.

.TP

.B \-C CFDIR

Use CFDIR as the configuration directory. Default is /etc/fai.

.TP

.BI "\-c|\-\-class " class[,class]

Define classes. Multiple classes must be comma separated. If not

specified, use the shell environment variable $classes (space

separated). The first class has lowest priority.

You need the script class/01-classes in your config space for this to

work, since -c only sets the variable $cmdlineclasses.

.TP

.B \-h|\-\-help

Show help, version and summary of options.

.TP

.B \-N|\-\-new

Renew the list of defined classes. By default, FAI uses the list of

classes which was created during the first installation and skips

calling fai-class(1). You need this option for the first

softupdate if the system was not installed with FAI, you can also use

it in subsequent runs.

.TP

.B \-s|\--cspace <URL>

URL of the config space. See fai.conf for more information on the

format and which types of protocol are supported.

This overrides the setting of FAI_CONFIG_SRC in /etc/fai.

.TP

.B \-u|\--hostname <HOSTNAME>

Use this hostname instead the output of the hostname command. This is

useful in conjunction with the dirinstall action, where you

want to manually define a hostname that should be used for

defining classes and for the network setup and other stuff. There, you

don't want the name of the host where you run fai

dirinstall to be used - because programs in a chroot, or in a

virtualized OS instance should run with their own name, and install

their own set of classes.

.TP

.B \-v|\-\-verbose

Create verbose output.

.SH ACTIONS

.TP

.B install

starts a fully automatic installation:

.RS

.IP 1. 3

setup the fai environment (create ramdisk, get configuration data,...)

.IP 2. 3

define classes and variables

.IP 3. 3

partition the local hard disk and create file systems

.IP 4. 3

install new software packages

.IP 5. 3

call configuration scripts

.IP 6. 3

check and save the logfiles

.RE

.TP

.B sysinfo

starts a system rescue:

.RS

.IP 1. 3

setup the fai environment (create ramdisk, get configuration data,...)

.IP 2. 3

define classes and variables

.IP 3. 3

do different types of hardware detection and print hardware info

.IP 4. 3

save the logfiles

.RE

.TP

.B softupdate

starts a softupdate:

.RS

.IP 1. 3

fetch FAI configuration according to /etc/fai/fai.conf

.IP 2. 3

define classes and variables

.IP 3. 3

update the installed packages

.IP 4. 3

install new software

.IP 5. 3

call configuration scripts

.IP 6. 3

check and save the logfiles

.RE

.TP

.B inventory

print hardware inventory:

.RS

.IP 1. 3

setup the fai environment

.IP 2. 3

define classes and variables

.IP 3. 3

List information about CPU, RAM, network devices, hard disks

.IP 4. 3

save the logfiles

.RE

.TP

.B dirinstall [DIR]

Installation into a directory. This is nearly the same action as

install except for skipping the task that partitions the hard disks and

creates the file systems. Classes can be defined with option \-c, or by

giving the hostname with \-u or \-\-hostname and enabling automatic definition

by class scripts from hostname with \-N. (Without \-N class scripts aren't

executed)

.SH NOTES

Running with action "install" on a running system will almost

certainly destroy it.

.SH EXAMPLES

fai \-v \-s file:///srv/fai/config \-cDEFAULT,FAIBASE dirinstall /srv/etchroot

This command will do an installation into the directory

/src/etchroot. For defining variables, selecting the software packages

and calling the customization script the classes DEFAULT, FAIBASE and

LAST are used.

.SH SEE ALSO

.br

This program is the central part of FAI (Fully Automatic Installation). See

the FAI manual for more information on how to use FAI.

The FAI homepage is https://fai-project.org.

.SH AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Henning Glawe

<glaweh@physik.fu-berlin.de> and Thomas Lange <lange@cs.uni-koeln.de>.