Modular FAI-Config
------------------
Patrick Schoenfeld <[email protected]>

Introduction
------------
This is an approach to provide a modular FAI config which has often used
configurations (at least often used by the author ;) in various modules
which can be mixed together.

The basic idea is that the master branch reflects a very basic FAI
installation. It should only contain the bare minimum to get a somehwat usable
system up and reachable via ssh.

Every possible feature, like additional classes or hooks to manage custom
package repositories during installation, are packed into Feature-branches
and should normally not conflict with the master branch or any other
Feature-Branch. So it should be possible to create an own FAI configuration
by simply creating an own git repository from the master branch and merging
each module which shall be available in the target FAI configuration.

Example
-------
The following example creates a basic FAI configuration, consting of
the base system, classes for german keyboard layout and/or environment
and classes for zsh installation and configuration.

mkdir /srv/fai/config; cd /srv/fai/config

git init

git remote add fai-configs git://github.com/aptituz/fai-configs.git

git fetch fai-configs

git merge fai-configs/master

git merge fai-configs/german

git merge fai-configs/zsh

Features
--------
Below is a description of the feature branches.

master
~~~~~~
The base branch. Contains a disk_config which creates a basic LVM partitioning
with a 250M /boot partition and a PV with a minimum size of 4096M. A volume
group vg0 will be created, with a swap device where the size is 100% of the
available RAM and the rest is used for /.

feature/cryptoroot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes the class CRYPTOROOT. If selected, it will install the required
packages for a cryptoroot in the target system.

feature/custom_packages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes a hook to handle a directory with a bunch of packages as a custom as
a apt, which will be added to the apt configuration before installing packages.

Usage:
1) Create a directory named 'packages' in the configuration space top level

2) 
Either:
- Create a reprepro repository (with codename/suite custom) in that directory,
  which must use 'custom' as a codename and 'main' as Component.
OR
- Drop a bunch of deb files there and install reprepro in the NFSROOT
  But note that the hook by default creates a config to handle i386 and amd64
  packages only in a Suite named custom and a Component 'main'

3) Use packages from this repo in your package_config as you like

feature/custom_static_routes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes a class STATIC_ROUTES which will, if activated for a node,
install a file /etc/network/if-up.d/20-ip-routes to the target system
and (if existing in the files/ hiearchy) a file /etc/network/ip-routes.
This script handles adding static routes from ip-routes.
Syntax is the syntax of the 'ip route add' command, without 'ip route add'.

feature/debian_devel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes a class DEBIAN_DEVEL with a custom package_config for Debian-related
development (like build-essential, dh-make, dpkg-dev and a bunch of others).

feature/german
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes a class GERMAN and a class GERMAN_ENV. The first will only configure
a german keymap and add de_DE.UTF-8 to the list of generated locales,
while GERMAN_ENV also includes a package_config which installs the 'german'
task via aptitude.

feature/notebook
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes the classes NOTEBOOK and WLAN. Currently NOTEBOOK is just installing
laptop-detect and WLAN the 'wireless-tools'.

feature/xorg
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes the class XORG which installs packages typically needed
in an XORG environment.

feature/zsh
~~~~~~~~~~~
Includes the class ZSH, ZSH_DOC and ZSH_ROOT.
ZSH and ZSH_DOC are just classes which refer to package_configs which install
zsh and zsh-doc respectively. ZSH_ROOT is a special class which installs
zsh and configures it as the root shell. It will also copy a .zshrc to /root
if an appropriate file is available in the files/ hiearchy.