FAI user reports

From: Oleg Roitburd
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 15:18:27 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ca. 3000
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8 for Debian/Etch, 2.8.4 for Debian/Sarge, 3.2.4+svn4837 for Ubuntu/Hardy

Which version are you using as your install kernel? Custom kernel 2.4.32 for Etch&Sarge, Generic for Ubuntu

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
Webserver with apache + php
Java Application-Server
Mysql, Mail, DNS Server
HTTP Cache Server
NFS Filer, Loadbalancer

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy: no
via network card: yes
type of network card: tg3, e100, e1000, pcnet32
using FAI-CD: no
from USB stick: no
BOOTP: no
PXE, DHCP: yes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? In Ubuntu it does work. Our Custom kernel does it also
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? NO

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 3.5 MB
How many files do you have in ../config/files? Etch: 590, Sarge: 2166

What is the business of your company/organisation? Lycos Europe
is one of the leading European internet destinations operating a
pan-European network of websites in eight languages. The company's
combination of search, communication services, content channels,
Internet access, homepage building and online communities addresses a
wide range of target groups.

Additional comments:
Great Software :-)

Most hosts are VM's. We have nearly 250 blades running ESX server. Each
blade runs up to 10 instances of Debian. And about 100 on nativ
hardware. IBM Blades and Dell Poweredge.

From: Owen Shoemaker, oshoemaker +@= flektor-inc dot. com
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:31:02 -0700

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 600 hosts with 4 installs of fai
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2
Which version are you using as your install kernel? Basic Ubuntu kernel 2.6.24.18.20

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Web servers, rails application servers, Mysql DB servers, 
   FAI servers, DNS servers, LDAP servers, etc...

How do you boot your hosts? PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes, with
  the only exception being a couple raid controllers.  That was easy to fix.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, with puppetd and SVN

What is the business of your company/organisation? A web 2.0 media mashup tool, Flextor

Additional comments: 
We install a lab environment, dev environment, and a production
environment with an a and b side.

It is a web 2.0 media mashup tool. Started the ops side of the company
about 1.5 years ago. Lots of ruby on rails, flash, media, etc...

From: Olivier Le Thanh Duong, olivier {} lethanh d_ot be>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:16:55 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~80, 30 of them on Ubuntu Dapper
   on a old FAI installation and the rest on Ubuntu Hardy in a newer installation

Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.1-0ubuntu2~ppa2~gutsy1
Which version are you using as your install kernel? Default ubuntu Kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Shared Desktop computer for the students

> How do you boot your hosts? A FAI-CD which boot on NFS.
> Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes
> Which drivers are missing? None
> Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, as a BZR repository
> How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 2.0M, 281
>How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 26

What is the business of your company/organisation? Computers room for the students, (Free University of Brussels)
    Department of Computer Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Additional comments: 
We use an optical fiber network which is why we didn't use PXE but I'm
planning on reconsidering this when I get more time. 
The homes are shared over NFS, students can acess their files from a
separate server via SFTP.

From: anonymous
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:49:44 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 10-20, currently in beta
production use will be around 200 if all turns out well

Which version of fai are you using? distribution default from Debian Etch / Ubuntu Hardy

Which version of fai-kernels are you using?
Debian: 2.6.18 x86_32 & x32_64
Ubuntu: 2.6.24 x86_32 & x32_64
(both distribution default)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
testing environment / default server installation according to standard
FAI is not supposed to manage the servers, just provide "a fresh image"

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy:
via network card: x
type of network card: BroadCom NetExtreme / Intel EtherExpress 100(0) / XenSource Virtual NIC, VMware Virtual NIC
using FAI-CD:
from USB stick:
BOOTP:
PXE, DHCP: x

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yep
Which drivers are missing? none so far

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no (not yet?)
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 228K, 58
How many files do you have in ../config/files? 15

What is the business of your company/organisation? Internet provider

Additional comments:
FAI's main focus is to provide consistent default installations according
to our installation standard, it is set up in a way you only need to choose
the operation system. FAI_FLAGS to customize the installation details are being
set automatically according to the specifics of the hardware / virtual machine

From: Goesta Smekal, goesta | smekal + at
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:09:30 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? currently ~ 50, >150 when finished

Which version of fai are you using?
   2.8.4 (Ubuntu Breezy Badger), historical
   2.10 (Ubuntu Dapper Drake), produktion
   3.2.4 (Ubuntu Hardy Heron), in development

Which version are you using as your install kernel? 
   Breezy: default OS Kernel
   Dapper: custon built vanilla 2.6.17
   Hardy: default Ubuntu Kernel 2.6.24

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Desktops, Fileserver (in branch offices)

How do you boot your hosts?
             from floppy: as iso on CD
        via network card: yes
    type of network card: various 3Com, RTL81*, D-Link ...
               PXE, DHCP: in development for hardy

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no
Which drivers are missing? serial ATA on several hosts
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? yes, git

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 349MB, 348 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 125

What is the business of your company/organisation? NPO, social services, Wiener Hilfswerk

Additional comments: 
We use FAI mainly to rollout our Linux desktops and manage software on 
these. Branch offices also get their fileservers set up by FAI.

From: Ralf Spenneberg, ralf : spenneberg net
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:18:49 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? I regularly install 16 hosts using fai.
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.13

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops used for training purposes

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: all
   type of network card: Built-in e100
           using FAI-CD:
	 from USB stick:
	          BOOTP:
              PXE, DHCP: yes, PXE is used for all.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Currently yes.
Which drivers are missing? None.
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Currently no.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 344k, 47
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 39


What is the business of your company/organisation? Linux training and consulting, OpenSource Training Ralf Spenneberg


Additional comments: 
These are training machines. The install happens weekly.
Fai is an easy way to setup the clients for the training classes. I
use Fai for Debian and Ubuntu, while I use Kickstart and Autoyast for 
Fedora and Suse.

From: Philipp Grau, phgrau _a_ zedat dot fu-berlin.de
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 14:07:37 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 110
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? plain Debian kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Virtually all kinds of hardware (HP DL380,
   FSC-Workstations, HP-Bladecenter, Old-Style-PCs), with all kinds of software...

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: Yes 
   type of network card: bnx2, tg3
           using FAI-CD:
	 from USB stick:
	          BOOTP:
              PXE, DHCP: Yes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes
Which drivers are missing? None
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, SVN
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 91Mbytes, 300 Files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 216

What is the business of your company/organisation? Education, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Computer Center (ZEDAT)

From: Andrew Janke, a dot janke =+= gmail + com>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:30:06 +1000

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~400
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.7
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom build Ubuntu 2.6.22

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, cluster nodes

How do you boot your hosts? PXE+DHCP or USB stick.
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes.
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Nope.
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)?  824K, 202 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 22

What is the business of your company/organisation? medical imaging research,
   McConnell Brain Imaging Center and Centre for Magnetic Resonance 

Additional comments: 
We use FAI to install Medical Imaging cluster computing machines and
for the affiliated desktop machines that users of the cluster(s)
use. The most amusing part to get going has been to bootstrap the
various new Ubuntu flavours as they come out.  We try to stay on the
bleeding edge so perhaps this is our problem! We have also shifted
from doing all the config with FAI and softupdate to doing the initial
install with FAI (install, base packages, SSH root keys, network
setup) and then from there maintaining everything with cfengine2.

From: Volker Epting
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:32:58 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~100, 82 desktops, 10 measurement systems, at the moment 8 server (all kind of servers)

Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? plain Debian etch kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, all kind of servers, small measurement-systems with VIA epic boards

How do you boot your hosts?
  mostly with PXE, DHCP
  sometimes I use a floppy when PXE/DHCP doesn't work

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes, in all cases
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? not at the moment :-(
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 305K, 75 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 15 files

What is the business of your company/organisation? Research

Additional comments: 
I use fai to install standard debian basic systems. Most of the 
adaptation to our environment is placed in self created debian packages.

From: Carsten Aulbert, carsten.aulbert {} aei dod mpg dod de
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:19:33 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 1380
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom kernel 2.6.23

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? cluster nodes, storage server, mgmt. server

How do you boot your hosts?
       via network card: yes
   type of network card: e1000 (Intel 82573)
              PXE, DHCP: yes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Don't know, maybe
Which drivers are missing? Areca for storage nodes (I would guess)
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? yes

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 13M, 260
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 170

What is the business of your company/organisation? Research, Gravitational Waves,
   Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)

Additional comments: 
This cluster is called ATLAS.
Successfully Using PXEboot/Dosimage (40MB!) to flash BIOS, init IPMI cards
Might appear in Top100 in next Top500 list, would have been in top40 in
November (28 TFlop/s) and top 5 in Germany.

From: Ralf Tomczak, noemail @ mobile.de
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2008 10:55:26 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Approx. 600 hosts
Which version of fai are you using?
   Still on Woody, fai 2.2.3
   On Sarge, fai 2.8.6 (possibly patched by Linux AG - corebiz)

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom build kernel 2.6.21

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Webserver, Database server, Mailserver
   and a bunch of misc server.
   In more detail: Webserver (Apache, Tomcat), Database server (MySQL), Mailserver (Postfix)

 How do you boot your hosts? BOOTP, PXE, DHCP

 Do you manage your configuration space under version control? CVS
 How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)?
   Woody: 1.1G, 3500 files
   Sarge: 38M, 3090 files
 How many files do you have in ../fai/files?
   Woody: 3036
   Sarge: 2622

What is the business of your company/organisation? mobile.de, a marketplace for new and used cars

Additional comments: 
We just use FAI for setting up all of our linux servers on the
production sites as well pre-production. It's a pretty convenient way
of doing it.

From: Sebastien Varrette, sebastien dot varrette -a t- uni.lu
Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:41 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 19
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? plain Debian kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?  cluster nodes + NFS server

How do you boot your hosts? via network card, using PXE, DHCP.
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes, yet  
   the ethernet interface are switch - a specialization of /etc/udev/ 
   rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules is required

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 115M,  137      
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 54

What is the business of your company/organisation? University of Luxembourg

From: Derrell Lipman, derrell.lipman ,at, backlottech com
Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 10:22:42 -0400

How many hosts have you installed using fai? About 100
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4 and 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? linux appliance

How do you boot your hosts? via network card on current hardware;
  using CD on antique hardware, to PXE,DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Custom kernel being used

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 4,4GB, 73 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 18, but many files are
   added/modified via hooks and scripts as well

What is the business of your company/organisation? LifeLine-DVD intelligent backup appliance BacklotTech.com

From: TOUZEAU DAVID, david .touzeau +a+d+ fr.kaspersky .com
Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 14:28:23 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai?  If it working, using FAI has public mode
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.18

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Mail server/web server

How do you boot your hosts?
           using FAI-CD: yes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yep.
Which drivers are missing? Currently no drivers missing

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 200 mb
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 4

What is the business of your company/organisation? artica

Additional comments: 
Provide an installation CD without human intercation for install a fully mail server

From: Fabian Haupt, fhaupt X informatik.uni-wuerzburg dot de
Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:54:57 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 54
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? plain Debian kernel 2.6.18-6-686

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, servers

How do you boot your hosts? PXE, DHCP
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yup
Which drivers are missing? none

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? yes, subversion
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 134 MB, 174 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 122

What is the business of your company/organisation? University installation: Labs
in the mathematics departments of the university of Wuerzburg.

Additional comments: 
It replaced a gentoo setup with Rembotoolkit (now at IBM)

From: Laurent Coustet, ed =@ debian-fr dod net
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:36:13 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? About 100
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Only desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
             from floppy: sometimes
        via network card: almost always
    type of network card: built-in (SIS, RTL, Intel, ...)
            using FAI-CD: never tried
          from USB stick: never tried
  	           BOOTP: uh?! :)
               PXE, DHCP: as "via network card"

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No.
   Mostly because machines we buy are too recent, and network / SATA 
  drivers are ofen too old in vanilla.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No. But
   It'll comme very soon as now I'm  not the only one to modify the configuration space :)

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 36M, 970
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 908

What is the business of your company/organisation? Software and hardware products for biological analysis laboratories in France
  Clarisys informatique

Additional comments: 
We use FAI for all desktop computers we give to our customers. We 
receive machines from the manufacturer, then, we plug machines on the 
network then, they boot FAI. We then choose which CLASS to use, in 
function of the customer, then, it's automatically installed/configured. 
Ready for shipping :)

From: Ulrich Kortenkamp Ulrich.Kortenkamp = ph-gmuend = de
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:44:37 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~20
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Ubuntu-Kernel: Ubuntu 2.6.20-16.32-generic

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops

How do you boot your hosts? PXE, DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No
Which drivers are missing? drivers for HP hardware (in particular the smartcard keyboard)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 46M, 908 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 909 files, 798 files in /srv/fai/config/files/opt
What is the business of your company/organisation? University of Education, Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd

From: Sebastian Hetze, s.hetze _at= linux-ag do. com
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 11:42:33 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? >>1000
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.6
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom 2.6.20

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? all

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:
       via network card:  X
   type of network card:  all
           using FAI-CD:  X
	 from USB stick:
	          BOOTP:
              PXE, DHCP:  X

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 456K, 89 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files?  27 files

What is the business of your company/organisation? Linux Information Systems AG

Additional comments: 
  We use FAI as vital part of our software and configuration
  management. Together with cfengine, we install and configure
  all CoreBiz (Ubuntu-based) systems.
  We use LDAP to manage installation profiles. FAI classes,
  variables, package lists and disk configs are derived
  dynamically from the installation targets LDAP entry.

From: Benoit Mortier, benoit.mortier ,at, opensides do_t be
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:39:49 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 24
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? fai-kernels on etch amd64

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? cluster nodes

How do you boot your hosts?
	PXE, DHCP: X

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes
Which drivers are missing? none

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no, under ldap with GOsa
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? around 100K
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? around 50 classes and lots of templates

What is the business of your company/organisation? IT consulting in free software OpenSides.be

Additional comments: 
This installation was done for a customer. EDF R&D
They are the French National Electricity company
FAI is mainly used for deploying cluster node and distribution
servers, they have now a gui - GOsa2 - To deploy their development clusters

From: Gerald Klinkl
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:53:18 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 5
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? plain Debian kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? notebooks, desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card:
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD:
	 from USB stick:
	          BOOTP:
              PXE, DHCP: x

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? smartcard reader on notebooks (FSC Lifebook's E8010)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Not yet
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 400K, 49
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 14

What is the business of your company/organisation? Program- and System Engineering, Consulting

Additional comments: 
Set up (and reset) Linux hosts in the test lab.

From: Maxim kovgan
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:01:59 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~55
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? plain Debian kernel, 2.6.18

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, cluster nodes

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card:y
   type of network card:Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM/CA/CAM Ethernet Controller (rev 01)
           using FAI-CD:
	 from USB stick:
	          BOOTP:
              PXE, DHCP:X

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? y
Which drivers are missing? -

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? svn
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 3.0M, 90
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 16

What is the business of your company/organisation? Education, university, Technion, Computer Science dept. Distributed Systems Lab

Additional comments: 
nice package, thanks for the help in IRC.

From: Lou Ruppert, lruppert aatt ucf .org
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:28:47 -0400

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 27
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.1ubuntu1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom 2.6.17

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?  desktops, mail web file servers, notebooks

How do you boot your hosts? using FAI-CD or from custom GRUB 'reinstall via FAI' entry
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 180M, 372 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 104 files.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Church, University Christian Fellowship

Additional comments: 
We use FAI to build all Linux systems.  This allows less skilled workers
to perform systems builds.  We maintain machines in two countries, plus
newer laptops, machines donated to church members, computer lab
machines, and all of our servers with this system.  It works great, and
takes the guesswork out of machine builds.  It also allows us to upgrade
a machine clearly.  (Back up data, perform build with same profile
against newer repo and newer FAI version.)

From: Steffen Bornemann, steffen.bornemann =a=t htw- aalen. de
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:29:22 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 120
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.6
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Linux debian 2.6.18

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: no
       via network card: yes
   type of network card: nvidia nforce chip
           using FAI-CD: yes
	 from USB stick: no
	          BOOTP: no
              PXE, DHCP: yes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 67 MB, 163 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 78 files

What is the business of your company/organisation? Hochschule Aalen

Additional comments: 
Wir benutzen FAI seit einem Jahr für die Installation der Pool- und
Laborrechner. Es gibt zwei unterschiedliche Rechnertypen und mehrere
unterschiedliche FAI-Installationen. Der Großteil der Installationen
erfolgt über PXE+DHCP, einige ältere Rechner werden über eine Boot-CD
angesprochen, die sich dann mit dem NFS-Server verbindet (die
eigentliche Installation erfolgt dann wieder über das Netzwerk).

From: Per Foreby, perf at+at ddg dot lth.se
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 16:07:52 +0200 (CEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 149
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? fai-kernels 1.17+etch2

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktop lab computers

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy:
via network card: y
type of network card: forcedeth, sk98lin, 3c59x, e100
using FAI-CD: y
from USB stick:
BOOTP:
PXE, DHCP: y

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 39M, 239 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 192

What is the business of your company/organisation? Education, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Sweden

Additional comments:
After using solaris jumpstart for many years, fai was a very natural
choice when we made the transition to linux in 2004. It was in fact one
of the main reasons for choosing debian. The other reasons were
debians stability and total lack of commercial interests.

We use fai to install lab computers, mainly used by computer engineering
students. All configuration after the initial install is done using
softupdate to maintain a consistent installation. Softupdate is done
manually with cssh.

Configuration is preferably done with cfengine scripts to avoid too much
editing when upgrading to a new debian version.

For non debian software (firefox, thunderbird, matlab, maple, sun jdk,
specific eclipse versions and more), we create local debian packages and
add them to our own repository.

From: anonymous, info =@- servercrew dot. de
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:25:31 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? I installed round about 500 hosts with it. It will be more and more.

Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom 2.6 kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? root servers for customers, basic install, only with ssh.

How do you boot your hosts?
              PXE, DHCP: X

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Nope, i use basicly the .deb packet

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 26Mb, 53

What is the business of your company/organisation? Small ISP which provides Dedicted server, managed Firewall and so on. www.servercrew.de

From: Tomas Ögren, stric add_ cs.umu dod se
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:54:18 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? About 70
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8 currently, 2.8.4sarge1 before
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, login servers

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: no
       via network card: yes
   type of network card: tg3, rtl8169, e1000, ...
           using FAI-CD: no
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE and DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? -
Which drivers are missing? -
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Should ;)
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 40M, 162 (of which 37M/13 files are .deb/.tar)
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? ~150

What is the business of your company/organisation? Department of Computing Science

From: anonymous
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:18:48 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~20
Which version of fai are you using? 3.2
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? own kernel, 2.6.22-cks1 from kernel.org

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? webservers/mailservers/...

How do you boot your hosts? PXE

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no
Which drivers are missing? SATA drivers missing for PIIX "ata_piix"

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no

What is the business of your company/organisation?-

Additional comments: 
adding LVM in the normal disk_config would be nice

From: John Heim, jheim .ad@. math.wisc dot .edu
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:52:21 -0500

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Approximately 60
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom built 2.6.18 kernel patched with speakup

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, laptops

How do you boot your hosts?
           using FAI-CD
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? N/A (using custom kernel)
Which drivers are missing? N/A

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 1.1 Mb
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 81

What is the business of your company/organisation? Education,Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin 

Additional comments: 
I'm blind so I have written a script to query our mysql database for
configuration setting. This script then prints class names that
determine how the install will be performed. For example, if a flag is
set in the database indicating that the machine should be dual-boot,
Windows and linux, the disk partitioning preserves the first existing
partition. This way I don't even have to have a monitor on a machine
when performing an FAI install.

From: Thomas Böhme, MC-Wetter GmbH
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:21:25 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 39
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8 and 2.8.4sarge1 for sarge
Which version of fai-kernels are you using?
i386 sarge -> vmlinuz-2.6.16.1-fai from kernel.org
amd64 sarge -> 2.6.17.7 from Kernel.org
i386 etch -> vmlinuz-2.6.18-fai-kernels from fai-kernel package
amd64 etch -> vmlinuz-2.6.18-fai-kernels-amd from fai-kernel package

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? certain types of servers
Many different Webserver setups
normal server systems running just some perl and java
3 different MySQL database HA-Cluster
OpenVPN Server
FAI-Server itself (including Bind9, DHCP, NFS, ATFPTD, SVN, LDAP, CVS, Nagios and a lot more)
a second Fai-Server in netherlands
FTP-Server
Mail-Server (dev. state)
File-Server NFS/Samba (dev. state)

- How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy: no
via network card: yes
type of network card: intel, broadcom, 3com
using FAI-CD: no
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE and DHCP

- Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
For Debian etch (i386/amd64) it does
For Debian sarge (i386) it does
For Debian sarge (amd64) I build a new one from kernel.org, but
maybe just because I tried with i386 fai-kernel. So I cannot tell
for sure. But there was a driver missing (I think for
SCSI-Controller Dell Perc5) only available in 2.6.17 and above.

- Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, we use SVN.
- How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? Sarge: 207M, #818, then Etch: 660k, #138
- How many files do you have in ../fai/files? sarge: 591, etch: 83

What is the business of your company/organisation? weather information and distribution meteogroup

Additional comments:
FAI is used here to setup each Linux system, which is gonna be new or
upgraded to debian etch. So there will be more in the future. Most of
our systems are in a HA setup of 2 machines using heartbeat and
drbd. There are atm two classes that include 5 hosts each.

From: Mrfai, fai _ad_ informatik dotr uni dash koeln .de
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:16:15 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Currently 22 hosts
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.18 from fai-kernels 1.17, and plain 2.6.18 kernel with initrd

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, notebooks, web servers, file server

How do you boot your hosts? all with PXE
   type of network card: onboard Intel, e1000 and 3com
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yep
Which drivers are missing? none

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? yep, subversion
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 20M, 209
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 81

What is the business of your company/organisation? education and research, departement of computer science, university of cologne, germany

Additional comments:
The actual number of hosts I've installed is uncountable, since I'm doing a
lot of installations for testing purpose. Additionally I'm also using
the newest FAI versions before they become available ;-)

From: Andreas Hirczy, ahi xadx itp dot tugraz.at
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:44:18 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 4 so far, about 80 are planned
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.6 from fai-kernels 1.17+etch2

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, cluster nodes, AFS Server
	architetures are i386 and amd64

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: -
       via network card: yes
   type of network card: 3Com, Broadcom, Intel, ...
           using FAI-CD: no, but will try, since not all our PCs support PXE
                         reliable 
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? yes, subversion
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 82 kB, 31 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 5

What is the business of your company/organisation? education & reseach  TU Graz, Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics

Additional comments: 
I perform only a very basic installation - target is a text mode only
install, with openssh-server, cfengine2, krb5, and AFS client working. I have
quite a bit of cfengine and perl scripting to complete this to either a
workstation, computing node or AFS file server.  After gaining some
experience with FAI I plan to install ready to use AFS file servers without
any postinstall steps.

I keep some (mostly up to date) notes on FAI.

From: Remi Bergsma
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:02:04 +0200 (CEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 80 (and counting..)
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4sarge1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build 2.4 and 2.6 kernels

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? web, mail and database servers.
   Installed all nodes for our cluster which is used for hosting websites.

How do you boot your hosts? PXE and DHCP
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No
Which drivers are missing? broadcom tg3 nic driver (I've built a new kernel for it to work)
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 14M, 109 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 54

What is the business of your company/organisation? Webhosting
and development of Website Management software. (LATUS) MoveNext

Additional comments: 
We are using FAI to install dedicated servers used for web- mail- and
databasehosting. We just plug them into the install-network and a few
minutes later the install is ready. It works great!

Thank you for creating FAI. It's a wonderful piece of software which has
saved me a LOT of time! Thank you very much.

From: Alan Wood, wooda @=@ westminster _ ac _uk
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:19:37 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 50
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.4.xx

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy: * (occasionally)
via network card: *
type of network card: Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet
(on-board on Dell PCs)
using FAI-CD:
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? Dell FP1097FP flat-panel display is not recognised (but it is if you load debian from CD)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 364k, 52 files
(plus a few hundred megabytes of stuff installed by script in /usr/local/share/fai/scripts/LAST)
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 14

What is the business of your company/organisation? Higher Education, University of Westminster, School of Informatics

Additional comments: PCs are used by students in
networking, OS and sofware installation laboratory experiments. These
get messed up by student installations every day, or have different
operating systems installed, and so need reloading with fresh copies
of Debian frequently.

We may stop using FAI, as there is a fault in the v3 installation that
I cannot diagnose; if the documentation were there, I may be able to
fix it. The lack of up-to-date documentation is more important than
releasing v3.2!

From: Russ Allbery, rra =@ stanford _dod edu
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:11:28 -0700

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 450 production hosts
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? We're using the 2.6.18 FAI kernel
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? servers a nd some desktops

How do you boot your hosts? PXE and DHCP

Our systems are all either Dell or Sun server hardware and we install them
all via PXE and DHCP. We don't use floppies or CDs if we can possibly
help it.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, of course. CVS.
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 680KB and 136 files.
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? Only 12, since we avoid using fcopy and Cfengine where we can avoid it.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Stanford University, a private teaching and research university.

Additional comments:
We run all of our core infrastructure (Kerberos, AFS, web, DNS, etc.) on
Debian and do all Debian installs via FAI. So almost entirely servers,
although some of us do install our desktop systems via FAI. We don't have
any clusters yet, beyond some simple remote timeshare systems, but when we
do we'll install them via FAI.

Note that we use one system to FAI build sarge and etch for both
i386 and amd64 systems, so our setup is somewhat different and a little
more flexible than most FAI systems.

We also use bundle to do install-time actions instead of Cfengine or
fcopy, since it's a lot easier to deal with. See:
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/bundle/
to see what bundle is.

From: Katharina Drexel, Genua GmbH
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 12:37:14 +0200 (CEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~100
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.7
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.20.1 (self-built)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Workstations, servers, standalones (all i386 + Etch)

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:    -
       via network card:    -
   type of network card: tigon, 3com, ...
           using FAI-CD:    -
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: DHCP + isolinux-CDROM

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?  no
Which drivers are missing?     Tigon (tg)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control?    Yes (cvs)
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)?    1,8 MB,
How many files do you have in ../fai/files?  254

What is the business of your company/organisation? German IT security specialist, GeNUA
   Gesellschaft für Netzwerk- und Unix-Administration

From: Frank Doepper, fd ** taz * de
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 15:37:33 +0200 (CEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~10 so far, but 130 are planned

Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.18 from fai-kernels_1.17+etch2 and
   custom built 2.6.18 (with Fibrechannel support)

How do you boot your hosts?
         via network card: Yes.
     type of network card:  Builtin Intel et al.
             using FAI-CD: Yes.
         BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:  PXE, DHCP.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? In most cases, yes.
Which drivers are missing? qla2xxx, lpfc

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 1.2M, 109
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 43

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Desktops, server (all kinds of), notebooks

What is the business of your company/organisation? Newspaper: taz, die tageszeitung

From: Tim Cutts, tjrc ad sanger dit ac dit uk
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:07:50 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Approximately 1000
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8 for etch, 2.8.4sarge1 for sarge machines

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? For etch, the standard FAI 2.6, kernel from fai-kernels 1.17,
   On sarge custom built kernels.  

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? i386 desktops, i386 and amd64 cluster nodes


How do you boot your hosts?
   PXE, using a DHCP server resident on a different machine (we have a  
   central DHCP server for all operating systems and architectures)

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Almost.
   Some very recent graphics hardware is problematic (can't remember the precise model)

Which drivers are missing? Nothing missing,
   but in some cases the kernel doesn't work properly  
   and hangs, but I think this is the fault of buggy BIOSes on the  
   affected machines (HP Deskpro dc7700)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, CVS
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 9.1 MB, 183 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 144 files

What is the business of your company/organisation? Human genome and disease research
The Sanger Institute

Additional comments: 
See also: Sanger

From: Holger Parplies, wopp _a_d parplies dod de
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 23:47:24 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? One test system so far,
at least 15 more to come once our setup is satisfactory
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6 from fai-kernels 1.17+b1

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
via network card: Intel EtherExpress PRO/100
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE + DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Not so far, but good idea :-).
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 564KB, 86 files so far
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 28 (so far)

What is the business of your company/organisation? Play goods and tinkering specialist shop

Additional comments:
One test system so far, at least 15 more to come once our setup is
satisfactory (we're migrating from SuSE to Debian etch, cleaning up
our installation policy, and using proprietary and own software needing
to be packaged, so there's some work to do).

Our main goal when using FAI is to be able to rebuild a host in case
of a hardware defect with a minimum of attention required.
Aside from that, the transition from SuSE to Debian is bound to be much
less painful if you can have the whole network complete it in a matter
of something like 20 minutes. No, we won't do *all* at once ;-), but we
obviously won't need to manually install each computer individually.

From: Steffen Grunewald, AEI MPG
Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 12:17:28 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? more than 800
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4sarge1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.4.27 for Sarge installs, 2.6.17 for Etch

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? compute cluster nodes, arch: i386, alpha, amd64

How do you boot your hosts? PXE; netboot for Alpha

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? CVS

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 56 MB
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 549 (no kidding!)

What is the business of your company/organisation? Gravitational wave research
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)

Additional comments: 
see also Merlin Cluster

From: Brian Gannon, bgannon ad gmail_dod_ com
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 14:13:11 -0500

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 200+
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8 -> 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom 2.6 (2.6.19.4)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Servers and cluster nodes

How do you boot your hosts?
             from floppy:  No
        via network card: Yes
    type of network card:  intel e1000
            using FAI-CD: Yes
        BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: DHCP/PXE

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Custom kernel so yes
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? CVS

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 3.1, 74

What is the business of your company/organisation? Artificial Intelligence driven stock market trading

Additional comments: 
We primarily use it to build out cluster nodes. It provides an EASY  
way to reimage and add machines.
Most of the FAI boxes are used in the computer cluster for AI Training.

From: Jonathon Blumenthal, jonblumenthal =ad_ gmail dod com
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:34:28 -0400

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Currently 200+, in the future it will be 1000+
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.5
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.16

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Cluster nodes, web server, and DNS

How do you boot your hosts? PXE
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? SVN
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 5.6M, 1287
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 1225

What is the business of your company/organisation?

Additional comments: 
We are using FAI to deploy a large scale highly distributed HA cluster.

From: Jeffrey Stolte
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:47:37 -0600

How many hosts have you installed using fai? sarge: 380, etch: 23
Which version of fai are you using? sarge: 2.8.4, etch: 3.1.8
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? sarge: custom build 2.6, etch: Debian package 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, laptops, servers, and cluster nodes (Mostly all Dell hardware)

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:  
       via network card: X
   type of network card: mostly 3-Com, Intel, Broadcom
           using FAI-CD: X  (under sarge, would use under etch if available)
              PXE, DHCP: X

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? sarge: no, etch: yes, so far

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? somewhat, using RCS
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 
   sarge: 70MB,  246 files
    etch: 56MB,  180 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files?
   sarge: 38 files
    etch: 39 files

What is the business of your company/organisation? Atmospheric Research

From: anonymous, dot nz
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:06:46 +1200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 10 so far
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.5
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.16-fai-kernels
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?  yes

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Stand-alone small control systems.
  Not quite embedded, because off-the-shelf PC hardware is used.

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:  no
       via network card:  yes
   type of network card:  mini-ITX motherboard on-board ethernet
           using FAI-CD:  no
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:  yes(?), yes, yes

Do you manage your configuration space under version control?  yes, subversion
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)?  25MB, 300 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files?  100

What is the business of your company/organisation? Production of autonomous control

Additional comments: 
Small computer systems (mini-ITX) are used for autonomous control, with
a Linux base and proprietory application software. FAI is used to
install all software during system assembly.

FAI is a prety good design which is very flexible. As a downside of
this, it is also very complex. The FAI manual is too short, and it was
not straightforward to use. In my case, 2 different systems are
installed (same hardware), which under-utilises FAI's capabilities by a
long shot. Consequently much time has been wasted setting up FAI, though
obviously a perhaps not so good decision of my predecessor isn't FAI's
fault. I'll remove FAI from the project if I can. E.g. autoyast may not
be as capable, but would have been much faster and sufficient for the
job. Also, FAI is mono-cultural (it only works with Debian), and I
object to sinking a lot of effort into something non-portable because it
reduces my flexibility (of moving away from Debian in this case). You
could say the same about autoyast, however the effort investment with
that is much smaller, and it's not the only alternative by far - cloning
a disk springs to mind, distro-independent, and disk space costs dirt
compared with engineering time.

Thanks for the software!

From: Norbert Tretkowski, tretkowski aadd ip-exchange dot de
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 14:33:22 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 500, growing fast
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.5
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom build kernel 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? all kind of servers (web, mail, etc.)

How do you boot your hosts? PXE
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes.
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 4 MB, 552 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 32

What is the business of your company/organisation? ISP, Server Housing, IP Exchange GmbH

Additional comments: 
Installation of customer servers.
We are installing Debian 3.1, Debian 4.0 and OpenSuSE 10.1, each for i386 and amd64.
Some pictures of our locations: 1 2

From: Toomas Tamm
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:08:56 +0300

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Currently about 10; a cluster of 16 is waiting to be installed.

Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4sarge1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom build 2.6.18

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
(eg.: desktops, cluster nodes, notebooks, web server, mail server,...)
All of the above :-)
Actually I have not installed any notebooks, webservers or mail servers
yet, but it is only a matter of time. When they need an upgrade, it will
be done with FAI.

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy: X
via network card:
type of network card:
using FAI-CD:
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: X

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes.
Using subversion. I consider version control essential.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 714K, 68 files
Please note that Subversion causes a huge overhead in the configuration
space. I guess the actual files are about 20-30 kbytes.

How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 6

What is the business of your company/organisation? Education, computational chemistry (read: number crunching) group,
Tallinn University of Technology

Additional comments:
Floppy boot is essential since I have one type of netcard (dmfe driver
under linux) which is ill-supported by rom-o-matic and I have no other option
than put a full kernel on floppy.

I have set up FAI to install a copy of the install kernel on all
hosts automatically, and add that to the Grub menu. So as long as
I do not upgrade the install kernel, I can do a re-install via
a simple disk-reboot.

I think these (the files in fai/files) came from the demo setup which
I used to start my development. I rarely (if at all) use the files
feature. The systems are customized at the "scripts" stage using
cfengine. The cfengine configuration file is > 1000 lines , 47 kbytes
and about 100 config files are installed by it.

I have ever only used the (new) debian-installer once - to get the
first installation server off the ground. I found it a step back
from the old install-floppies when advanced changes were the goal.
However, I had planned to switch to FAI already then, and I have
never had to regret.

From: Tobias Doerffel
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 14:30:55 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 80 at one school and 100 at another school

Which version of fai are you using? since two years always the newest. Currently 3.1.7
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.6 from fai-kernels

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Desktops, in the past also file servers, proxy servers and firewalls

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: for old firewall computers
       via network card: all desktops
   type of network card: VIA Rhine, Intel Ethernet Pro 100
           using FAI-CD: no
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: yes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yep
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 2,5 MB, 445
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 375

What is the business of your company/organisation? education,
  Agricola-Gymnasium Chemnitz and Andre-Gymnasium Chemnitz

Additional comments: 
The same FAI setup is used in two school ich Chemnitz. Using a
specific FAI class for every school we manage the differences between
those setups. One school is using AFS/Kerberos the other is using NFS/LDAP.

From: Tobias Herziger
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:44:27 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? approx. 50 yet, will be around 200 in a couple of months.

Which version of fai are you using? 2.10 will probably change to 3.x this year.
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build (kernel-image-2.6.18-cxo)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? DELL x86 servers (web, database, cms, monitoring, mail, etc)

How do you boot your hosts? network card: Intel e1000 / DHCP,PXE
Which drivers are missing? megaraid (>2.20)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? not yet
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 4.6M in 197 Files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 90

What is the business of your company/organisation? CHIP Xonio Online GmbH

From: Dan McGrath
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:11:35 -0500

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Well, all my hosts have current been inside a VMWare machine so I 
  dont know if the numbers mean as much as say seperate machines with slightly different hardware.

Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4sarge1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? using the default 2.4 kernel

How do you boot your hosts? vmware boos via PXE from network card

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
  (eg.: desktops, cluster nodes, notebooks, web server, mail server,...)

What is the business of your company/organisation? production network for an auction business.

Additional comments: 
So far it seems like something I could find a use for. Many people 
(myself included) find reinstall's to be a time consuming process. What 
makes this worse is when you need to reinstall when your not prepared 
for it. I believe FAI helps by making you put in the "hard work" at the 
begining of your network by getting all of the replication, installation 
and other routines implemented and tested ahead of time. The result if 
that when you finally do need to reinstall a machine, chances are you 
just need to pop in a boot disk and walk away.

From: Emil Gorter, emil (ad) ripe net
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:55:21 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? approx. 55
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1ubuntu1 (shipped with Edgy)
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.17 from fai-kernels 1.12ubuntu1

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Dell Optiplex GX280 desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: X
   type of network card: (onboard) Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5751
           using FAI-CD:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: DHCP + PXE + tftp (no BOOTP)

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes, though FAI 2.10.1ubuntu1 (Dapper) which I tried earlier  
   gave me problems with USB keyboards.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No, but I have put some files under RCS
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 6.3M, 75
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 39

What is the business of your company/organisation? RIPE NCC

Additional comments: 
Previously we installed Ubuntu Hoary using PXE and an old static image 
on NFS.  We kept the machines up-to-date using a script based on rsync.
This caused problems when adding packages on the rsync master.  
Using FAI we update the package list for clients, and let the clients 
perform a real aptitude install.  This is much cleaner.

Using a partition hook I was able to backup user data to the network, 
re-partition the disk, setup LVM and restore user data.  

N.B.: I have bundled 215 /usr/local/ files (our own scripts and 
stuff) in a tarball, as moving these into the config tree would get 
messy.

From: Peter Gervai, grinapo ata gmail.com
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:32:34 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 18
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1.6
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? fai-kernels 1.15 (testing the config), custom built kernel 2.6 (final install)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? servers of any kind

How do you boot your hosts? via network card: broadcom nxtreme2, PXE, DHCP
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? qla2xxx requires firmware image, and I'm not sure
   whether faikernel knows it at all.
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 240k, 56 files

What is the business of your company/organisation?ISP

Additional comments: 
Right now I'm installing IBM blade centers using fai, and struggling
with softraid, lvm. Using Debian fai packages.

From: Christoph Schulthess, christoph dot schulthess ad post dot_ch
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 12:47:29 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ca. 100
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6.17

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, notebooks
How do you boot your hosts? only using FAI-CD
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no: HP DL7100 freezes during boot process

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? yes
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 12 GB
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 1628

What is the business of your company/organisation? A big yellow company in switzerland ;-)

From: Mathieu Rozieres
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:40:00 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 14
Which version of fai are you using? fai FAI 2.8.4sarge1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.13

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? web server, mail server, management server, ntp server, heartbeat cluster

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:  N
       via network card:  Y
   type of network card:  Intel Pro
           using FAI-CD:  Y
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:  PXE & DHCP

Which version of fai-kernels are you using as your install kernel? custom build kernel 2.6
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No
Which drivers are missing? LSI Megaraid, MPT Fusion

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? I tried but the Sarge version is broken using the CVS.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 412M, 442
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 223

What is the business of your company/organisation?French travel web portal

Additional comments: 
Using FAI on production environnement with Debian Sarge.
I am looking to integrate it with RedHat ES

From: Raoul Borenius, borenius_dfn_de
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:05:24 +0100 (CET)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? About 15, but there will be more and we are installing all new hosts with fai.

Which version of fai are you using? fai 2.8.4sarge1, now migrating to 3.1.5

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.8.4sarge1: custom kernel
   because of missing serial console support in fai-kernel-1.9.1sarge5, 3.1.5: fai-kernels-1.15

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
  stand-alone webservers
  stand-alone mailservers
  cluster nodes for mailcluster
  nfs-servers
  no workstations so far

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: yes (a few hosts where network card has no boot prom)
       via network card: yes
   type of network card: mostly e100
           using FAI-CD: no
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: DHCP and PXE, on SPARC DHCP only

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no, good idea...

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 752K, 136
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 40

What is the business of your company/organisation? DFN - Deutsches Forschungsnetz is Germany`s National Research and Education Network

Additional comments: 
 We use it to install i386, amd64 and sparc architectures.
 On sparc you have to supply all fai-parameters at the firmware-level
 since there is no such thing as PXE or similar on sparc.

From: Gavin Burris, ga5in __ psu.edu
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:08:29 -0500

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 12 hosts
Which version of fai are you using? 2.6.5
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.4 from fai-kernels 1.8.2

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?  cluster nodes

How do you boot your hosts?
             from floppy: rom-o-matic etherboot
        via network card:
    type of network card: Intel Corp. 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet
            using FAI-CD:
        BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE, DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing?  All but nvidia graphics

Do you manage your configuration space under version control?  No

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)?  17M, 54 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files?  22 files

What is the business of your company/organisation? Education, Pennsylvania State University

Additional comments: 
FAI has allowed me to install an entire scientific visualization cluster.
If a cluster node should fail, it can be replaced with a new node that
is booted with a single floppy and be up and running in fifteen minutes.

Website of the project. Pictures showing the Display and Cluster: (1) (2)

From: Paul Lussier, @_you_may_ask_for_it
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:38:43 -0500

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 300+ actual hosts. But these are re-FAI'ed
  several times a month. Technically, we've FAI'ed many 1000s of hosts.

Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom build kernel 2.4.31.

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Lab test systems, desktops, servers
 
How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: Only if we must (most desktops are old enough to require this :(
       via network card: Yes.
   type of network card: Various Intel NICs, some Netgear, some broadcom-based.
           using FAI-CD: Not yet, but we have big plans to.
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: Yes for all.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No.
Which drivers are missing? Qlogic Fibre Channel HBA drivers.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes.
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 15M, 139
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 32

What is the business of your company/organisation? Software engineering lab

Additional comments: 
We maintain a software engineering development lab using FAI
extensively. Over 300 hosts are configured to install via FAI. Since
we also maintain our own debian repository, we use FAI to keep these
hosts all up to date with respect to all the "correct" packages.

Because of the number of systems, we incur a significant number of
hard drive failures, as well as require drive-size upgrades fairly
often. FAI is indispensible for getting a host back into the testing
infrastructure quickly and correctly!

By creating a 'refai' script which frobs the boot sector of the drive,
and setting our default BIOS configuration to boot first from the
internal hard drive, then the NIC, we've allowed our our developers to
"make a mess" of a machine and be able to quickly get it back in
"pre-mucking-with" order consistently, quickly, and predictably.

From: anonymous
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 11:16:47 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? >1000
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1 and for old installation: 2.10.x

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? We need to use selfcompiled kernel because of missing drivers.
 
Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Cluster (incl. Nodes), normal application servers (web/tomcat, mail, dns etc.)

How do you boot your hosts?
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: [X]
 
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No, it doesn't.
    We are using areca raid host adapters and they are not available in original fai kernels.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes, via svn
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 2.7G / 18269
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 7004

From: Maurice Makaay, maurice.makaay @in te rn l.net
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:42:56 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Currently one test system
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.8

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Cluster nodes. We
have virus / spam scanning systems, based on debian.

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy:
via network card: X
type of network card: SUN X2100 ethernet port, supported by the module "forcedeth"
using FAI-CD:
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes.
The SUN X2100 system is fully supported. I've had no troubles installing the system.
All I had to do was add forcedeth to /etc/modules during install to make the network
card work correctly after a reboot.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Not yet,
but it will be once this leaves the development stage.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 480K in 37 files.
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 5 files. About the only
thing in there is the /etc/modules file for X2100 systems.

What is the business of your company/organisation? ISP in the Netherlands, InterNLnet BV
(hosting, mail, dial-in/dsl/fiber access, virtual provider services).

Additional comments:
We use FAI to bootstrap a minimal Debian installation and cfengine2 to
install all needed software and configure the systems.

Currently one test system, but we'll use it a lot more now we've set this up. As a start,
we'll bring up a new anti-spam/virus cluster. After that, we'll probably start upgrading
some existing Linux systems as well.

About our setup: we first installed a Debian system and then the fai packages. After that,
we copied all neccessary data (nfsroot, config space and /boot) to our dedicated
Sparc/Solaris system that is used for jumpstarting different kinds of systems. This
jumpstart environment already had a pxelinux boot environment, so we simply extended this
environment to support the FAI setup as well. Works like a charm!

From: Peter Brownell, greenman aatt muti.tv
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:16:21 -0000

How many hosts have you installed using fai? About 15
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4sarge1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Servers and "cluster" nodes 

How do you boot your hosts? PXE and DHCP
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No 
Which drivers are missing? We use HP proliant boxes which needed the CCISS drivers 

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Yes (Subversion) 
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 1.6MB, 235
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 140 

What is the business of your company/organisation? LondonMarketing, "Destination marketing" for London, http://www.londontown.com

Additional comments: 
We use FAI primarily for configuration management and change control
for our server infrastructure. Every configuration element of our
servers is managed, and (almost) every box can be rebuilt
automatically.  Our webservers work in a IPVS cluster, a new server
will install itself and download the webroot without any user
interaction, we only need to tell our loadbalancer that it exists. The
main machines that are not currently FAI'd are some of our bigger
database servers, which use LVM - and we have not quite done enough
work to get FAI and LVM to work nicely.

From: Andreas Jobs, Andreas.Jobs X@ ruhr -uni -bochum.de
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:05:11 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 3 in production (1-2 for testing)

Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.5
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build 2.6 kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? servers (RADIUS, login, proxy, web crawler)

How do you boot your hosts? via network card PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? IIRC the driver for "BCM5703 Gigabit Ethernet" was mising (but I'm not sure)

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? No.

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 108 files 772K

How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 44

What is the business of your company/organisation? Rechenzentrum Uni Bochum

From: Sebastian Schmitzdorff | sebastian . schmitzdorff hamburgnet . de
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 21:50:44 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 10+
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom 2.6.18.3

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? server, cluster nodes
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no

How do you boot your host?
            from floppy: 
       via network card:
   type of network card:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: X

Does the default kernel recognize all your hardware? NO
     Which drivers are missing: LSI MegaRAID support is missing.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Sale and Integration
  of professional server and storage systems. http://www.hamburgnet.de

Additional comments: 
We are using FAI to install linux based customer machines.
It's easy to maintain and has saved us lots of time in the past.
Thanks a lot for creating this great tool.
For the future Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SLES support would be "nice to have".

From: Michal Svamberg, svamberg a|t civ.zcu.cz
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:43:26 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 441 computers
  - 124 Debian 3.0/3.1 servers (87 regular server, 37 servers based on Xen).
  - 290 workstations at 19 classrooms in 6 locations with dualboot (Linux+WinXP)
  - 18 kiosks based on firefox
  - 9 nodes at one cluster

Which version of fai are you using?  We use 3 servers for FAI:
  - 2x FAI server with 2.8.4 version of FAI (use 32bit and 64bit NFSROOT)
  - 1x debian mirror (NFS gateway to AFS), no FAI package

Which version of fai-kernels are you using as your install kernel?
     custom build kernel 2.6 and 2.6 with XEN patches,
     all kernels are with openafs-modules package

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
  - desktops (with gnome, openoffice, burning, browsers, java, matlab, ...)
  - clusters (with openpbs)
  - servers for openafs, camera, web, ldap, database, aplication, shell,
    nocat, gateway/firewall, print, monitoring, ...

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: No, only for reinstalation
       via network card: for workstation in public schoolrooms
   type of network card: 3c509, tg3
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE and DHCP

What is the business of your company/organisation? Centre for Information Technology,
Laboratory for Computer Science, University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic

Additional comments:
87 regular servers (AFS, DB, print, accounting, vpn, freeradius, gateways, etc.)
37 virtual servers based on Xen (FAI, print, wiki, freeradius, testing, etc.)

FAI infrastructure:
 - workstation using PXE boot and sending FAI logs via email
 - 2 FAI servers with NFSroot (every has 32bit + 64bit AMD nfsroot) with 
   AFS-NFS gateway for $FAI
 - 1 NFS-AFS gateway (mirror mounting)
 - mirror + $FAI at AFS
 - 3 administrators (one is student), using CVS

Plan for next year:
 - append 4 new classroom (about 60 computers)
 - conversion some clusters at META Centrum (meta.cesnet.cz) from systemimager to FAI

 Documentation about FAI instalation at University of West Bohemia. It's only in Czech language.

Do you have some nice pictures of your installation? Public lab Yet another FAIwork Big pics

From: Hans-J. Ullrich, hans. ullrich æd loop.de
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 12:30:20 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 3
Which version of fai are you using? 3.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Mailserver, webserver, desktop, notebook
How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card:
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD:yes
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no
Which drivers are missing? graphics card "I810"
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no

What is the business of your company/organisation? 
IT-Consultance (this is my private) and government (this is where I am working)

From: anonymous
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 10:20:54 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? About a half dozen, but with many, many reinstalls.
Once every ten minutes is no exception since I'm debugging scripted installs at the moment.

Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6 kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? All kinds of server and desktop.

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy: Never.
via network card: Yes.
type of network card: TG3 driver works on it. I don'ask.
using FAI-CD: One machine too old and stupid to PXE-boot.
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: Yes. Most common method.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No. Our HP workstations had a network card that wouldn't
play nice with the 2.4 kernel provided.

Which drivers are missing? eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95751) rev 4001 PHY(5750)]

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Not the FAI one
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 236M, including nfsroot, 17273 files, again including nfsroot
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? Just a few custom files. 13 files in total.

What is the business of your company/organisation? n/a

Additional comments:
FAI is mainly used in our test/development network, where we often
have to re-install servers for a variety of tasks. I keep all the
servers FAI'ed up, and modify the DHCP server to give the machine a
boot file when I want to reinstall it. I've modified fai-monitor to
look for "installation complete" events and reconfigure the DHCP
server before the machine reboots.

I'm using FAI mainly as a super-powered reset button. Once I have the
system up and running and SSH-able, I use my own scripts to customise
the machine. The idea is to create an environment where I can build
whatever server the situation requires, whenever I want.

One of the things I would be very interested in is to port the FAI
installation resources to one of our AIX machines. That way, I can
install both AIX machines and Debian boxen from the same AIX
server.

From: Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing, info %ad% tchpc.tcd.ie
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:10:55 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 356 opterons, 80 xeons
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6 on the opterons,
fai-kernels 1.9.1sarge2 on the xeons

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? cluster compute nodes

How do you boot your hosts?
via network card: yes
type of network card: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: we used this to boot the nodes

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yes for the Xeon cluster of IBM x335.
Which drivers are missing?
for the Opteron cluster of IBM e326's, the missing drivers and "parts" were
- the SATA controller driver for
SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)

- 32bit compatibility layers for running 32bit, grub failed to
install initially because of this.

And obviously a year ago the OpenIB stack wasnt ready for use and wasn't
available in the debianised kernels in sarge. (this is needed for our
Infiniband HCA's to function)

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 4.1M, 2777
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 559

What is the business of your company/organisation? mainly an academic research/support unit
Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing, The University of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin.

Additional comments:
The IITAC cluster went into the top500 list in Nov. 2005 at 226th in the list.
More information and some pictures on the two clusters IITAC and moloch.

I'm answering this questionaire based on what we had available to us in
terms of software ~14-16 months ago.

We've used FAI to primarily bootstrap compute nodes, but we're slowly adding
to our FAI install so that we can bring up full nodes quickly if a node ever
has a hdd failure.

From: Adrian von Bidder, avbidder [äd] fortytwo.ch
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:06:37 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 80
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build 2.6.15

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, plus one NX terminalserver
 (which is basically the desktop plus a few packages.)

How do you boot your hosts? For Install: net, PXE boot.
  Some hosts are on WLAN which won't boot, so these are put to cable
  in a different room for installation.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No, IIRC
   the main issue was SATA.  Not sure, has been some time.

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? Subversion, yes.
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 5M, 154 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 196

What is the business of your company/organisation? IT consulting company, OPIT Solutions AG

Additional comments: 
Setup late during sarge lifetime, but too early for etch (particularly: fai 
was not ready yet) - so we install from a sarge nfsroot, but 
use "everything" (= KDE, oo.org, X, cups, udev, ...) from etch.  Yay! for 
Debian's package management / dependency handling.

This installation was done for a customer. It's Stiftung Bühl, Wädenswil
They are a children's home for children and young adults with learning disabilities.

From: Carl Caum, carl ä_d cs.mtsu.edu
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:05:21 -0500

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 25
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.1 (ubuntu)
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.15.6 from fai-kernels 1.10.3 (ubuntu)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops, cluster nodes, various servers

How do you boot your hosts? DHCP, PXE, TFTP
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes
Which drivers are missing? none

Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no, but I probably should start
How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 382 MB, 664 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 463

What is the business of your company/organisation? Middle Tennessee State University, Computer Science Department

Additional comments:
To deploy and auto update Ubuntu and Debian systems through our department. Although FAI has
saved us time and time again, udev continuously presents problems. I ended up having to give a
hack of a workaround like this:

#### .../fai/hooks/configure.DEFAULT ####
if [ -x $target/etc/init.d/udev ]; then
chroot $target /etc/init.d/udev stop
chroot $target /usr/bin/dpkg --configure --pending
chroot $target /etc/init.d/udev start
fi

Recentently we ran into a problem with hal and udev. I had to create special udev rules because
we didn't want to add all of our users to the cdrom, plugdev, etc groups in LDAP. So I made udev
create all the devices with the users group. Hal ended up having to be added to the users group to
work properly.

Also, we ran into a situation where we have a networking lab with a master node that has a single
connection to the outside world and all other machines were on a private network connected
to the master node. So I ended up creating a FAI installation that installs an FAI server that all
other networking lab machines can install off of. That was fun :) That's also why my .../fai/files
is so large.

From: Andreas Sindermann, sinder äd thp.Uni-Koeln.DE
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 12:12:03 +0200 (MEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~50
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10.1ubuntu1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6, kernel from
 fai-kernels 1.10.3ubuntu2 with forcedeth network driver added 

How do you boot your hosts?
       via network card:  X
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:  PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no
Which drivers are missing? forcedeth driver is missing in Ubuntu 6.06 version of fai-kernels

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops
Do you manage your configuration space under version control? no

How big is your config space (Mbytes, # of files)? 38MB, 116 files
How many files do you have in ../fai/files? 76

What is the business of your company/organisation? Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne

From: Russel Hill; russh347 xadx gmail.com
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 09:23:16 -0700

How many hosts have you installed using fai? a few hundred, unless you
count each installation on our test station (several hundred by itself)
Which version of fai are you using? 2.6.3 plus fai-bootcd 0.3.4
We are now in the process of updating to the latest fai (in debian testing)

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom built 2.4, derived from from fai-kernels 1.8
(soon to be the standard 2.6 FAI kernel)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Rack mount servers, in pairs. I'd also like to use FAI on our development boxes.

How do you boot your hosts? Using fai-bootcd, soon to be fai-cd.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
The 2.4 kernel didn't meet the requirements for fai-bootcd so we
recompiled to include those. The 2.6 kernel seems to have everything we need.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Key Technology. We manufacture and sell food processing equipment
(mostly sorters and conveyors).

Additional comments:
We use FAI to install and update software on production machines both
on our production floor and in the field. FAI makes the software
installation fast and easy for our production and field service
personnel. It also makes handling service calls easy because we KNOW
what's installed.

Our build servers automatically detect when source files have changed.
They build, test, and package the various software components. One
build server is dedicated to detecting new packages and automatically
building an fai-bootcd ISO.

Picture of our machines.
The pair of linux boxes on which we use FAI are just above the
UPS. The lower one runs our UI while the upper one does real-time
processing. The remainder of the 1U rack mount boxes house custom
boards with embedded processors for real-time image processing. The
embedded processors also run uClinux.

From: Rudy Gevaert; Rudy.Gevaert _ta_ UGent.be
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:55:54 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? up to today 43
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4, but now migrating to 2.10.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom built 2.4 and 2.6 kernels

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
  xen virtual and host servers, mail servers, imap servers, general
  purpose servers, file servers, vpn servers, ...
How do you boot your hosts? dhcp + pxe

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no
Which drivers are missing? mpt* drivers, megaraid drivers, ipmi

What is the business of your company/organisation? University of Ghent

Additional comments: 
  Hardware are almost all dell poweredges (1750,1800,1850, 1855), we
  also have a dell blade system.  I'm trying to install a Sun X4100
  with FAI right now.  This is 64 bit.

From: Peter Ackermann; packermann=et=thomas-krenn.com
Date: Mon, 08 May 2006 11:13:33 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 500 Servers per month
Which version of fai are you using? 2.9.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6.16

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Servers and some desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:
       via network card:
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:  X

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?  No
Which drivers are missing? Depends on the Server, mostly block device drivers for
  RAID-Controllers (ARECA, some Intel, LSI), networkcards (Marvel Yukon 2 e.x.)

What is the business of your company/organisation? Server Distribution, www.thomas-krenn.com

Additional comments: 
We use FAI to install all of our servers for quality checking. As we
use a costum kernel that supports all of our hardware, we can see
imediatly, if there is a hardwarefault.

From: Jan Jansen, jan.jansen =a=t uni-dortmund.de
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:40:52 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 8
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom build kernel 2.6.8

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Mail/DNS/Ldap Server, DB+Terminal Server, Network Clients with different cfgs

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: often
       via network card: more often
   type of network card: intel e100/e1000
           using FAI-CD: not yet
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No
Which drivers are missing? No missing, but wrong choose of ethernet
driver, Raid Drvs

What is the business of your company/organisation? Producer of industrial embedded hardware (cpci), EKF Elektronik &- Messtechnik GmbH

From: Sebastian Broekhoven s.broekhoven _A_d networking4all.com
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:00:43 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? At this moment about 15 hosts. But there will be more. 

Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel-image-2.6-686

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? All kind of hosting-servers. Database, DNS, Email, Web.

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: None
       via network card: None
   type of network card: None
           using FAI-CD: Some servers.
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: All our hosts boots this way

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? None at this moment.

What is the business of your company/organisation? webhosting company in the Netherlands, Networking4all bv

Additional comments: 
All our old Redhad and Fedora installations will be migrated to Debian
Sarge with FAI. We are using FAI to install and update our servers
remotely. FAI provides us a base installation.

From: Sebastian Schmitzdorff
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:26:57 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 200+
Which version of fai are you using? 2.10
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Hosting Server and Root Server

How do you boot your hosts? PXE, DHCP

What is the business of your company/organisation? easynet GmbH is a hosting company that provides 
customized datacentre/hosting/network solutions for business and enterprise customers.

From: IT Support Mathematical Institute, support =ad_ math.uni-bonn.de
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 13:34:29 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~80-90
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4 (patched)
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6.8-2-k7/AMD64

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Desktops

How do you boot your hosts?
from floppy:
via network card: X
type of network card: 3c905C-TX/TX-M, Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T, ...
using FAI-CD:
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE/DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? Only vfat that makes trouble with USB
sticks if you're not root. We are preloading it now via /etc/modules

What is the business of your company/organisation? Mathematical Institute of the University of Bonn

Additional comments:
We're using FAI to maintain the large amount of Debian workstations
here. We have a large number of different hardware configurations. FAI
does the job very well to handle these in a easy way. Before we used FAI
we had to do the boring installation via Debian installer each time we
installed a workstation. Transfer of common configurations was made via
cfengine and a small script. (Cfengine in woody and the backport was
horrible, the cfengine daemon often died and took 100% of the CPU until
we finally killed him)
The installation of Sarge via FAI was remarkably fast. Compared to the
several weeks for the switch from SuSE to Debian Woody (by hand), we
only needed several days to update the workstations to sarge (it took
several days because of organizational problems)

From: Marco Jankowski, Marco.Jankowski aatt bfr.bund.de
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 08:58:38 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~30
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.8 and custom build kernel 2.4

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Web-Server, Application-Server, Desktops, Notebooks

How do you boot your hosts? 
    from floppy: Actually from floppy with static ip
    type of network card: pcnet32 e1000 tg3 

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? 
Which drivers are missing? megaide(LSI)


What is the business of your company/organisation? Federal Institute for Risk Assessment
(BfR) is the scientific body of the Federal Republic of Germany that
prepares expert reports and opinions on questions of food safety and
consumer health protection on the basis of internationally recognised
scientific assessment criteria.

From: Guy Coates, gmpc =a_t sanger.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 09:41:19 +0100 (BST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? More than 540 in several clusters and for different servers
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? We use a custom 2.6 kernel.

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? compute farm, web servers and other miscellaneous servers

How do you boot your hosts? Via the network card (broadcom gigabit / tg3 cards)
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? Some SAS drivers are missing from the stock sarge kernel.

What is the business of your company/organisation? The Sanger Institute is a genome research institute primarily funded by
the Wellcome Trust. Our purpose is to further the knowledge of genomes,
particularly through large scale sequencing and analysis. Read this article.

Additional comments:
Main compute cluster
--------------------
168 IBM HS20 Blades (2x2.8 Ghz PIV, 32 bit OS) (picture)
280 IBM HS20 Blades (2x3.2 Ghz EMT64, 64bit OS)

Trace searchengine cluster
--------------------------
48 IBM LS20 Blades (2x2.4 Ghz Opteron, 64bit OS)

Web servers
-----------
28 IBM HS20 blades (2x2.8 Ghz PIV, 32bit OS)

Misc servers
-------------
20 HP DL585 / 385 servers (various 2 or 4 CPU dual core Opteron, 64bit OS)

Our deployed software stack is 725MB. Installation time on an LS20 blade
is 153 seconds. (Machines have scsi disks, and we have a local debian mirror)

As well as using FAI to install the OS, we also use FAI to "pre-install"
the machines. The "Pre-installation" stage flashes and configures the
BIOS and configures hardware raid controllers.

We run two fai servers, one for installing x86 machines, and one for installing
AMD64 machines. (I suspect that we should be able to consolidate onto one FAI server,
as /usr/local/share/fai is also identical on the AMD64 and x86 servers).

17 Mar 2004: We've used numerous automatic installers (IBM csm, RLX control tower, redhat
kickstart), and FAI is the fastest and the most flexible.

From: Bertrand Rétif, contact aatt phosphore-si.com
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:57:12 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Around 15
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?  File server, mail server, desktops
How do you boot your hosts? via network card, PXE boot and DHCP

What is the business of your company/organisation? I just
create my company that provide computer services to small companies. I currently working alone.
Phosphore SI - http://www.phosphore-si.com


Additional comments: 
I use FAI to automate the installation of servers and destops I installed 
under Linux. I keep the configuration of servers under subversion,
then I am able to reinstall quickly a host thanks to FAI and subversion.

From: Juraj Holtak, juraj aadd proaut.org
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 13:20:01 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? about 50 to 70
Which version of fai are you using? started with 2.5.x and are using 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build 2.4 kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? destops

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: X
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD: X
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE and DHCP

What is the business of your company/organisation? IT Service Provider, SCHWAAR.COM, ProAut s.r.o.

From: Mamadou Sow, Mamadou.Sow aXt lipn.univ-paris13.fr
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:49:15 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 5
Which version of fai are you using? 2.9.1
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.6.15 from fai-kernels 1.10.2

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops
How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: *
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: *
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

What is the business of your company/organisation? Computer Science lab of the Paris 13 University (L.I.P.N.)

Additional comments: 
In first time I'm doing some test.

From: Chris Allen chrisa xatx matrixscience.com
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:54:11 +0000

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 14 blades in an IBM Bladecenter HS20
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.6 FAI kernel

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Mascot server cluster nodes
How do you boot your hosts? PXE using on-board Broadcom Gigabit NICs
Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? The 2.6 kernel seems to work.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Matrix Science - proteomics software.

Additional comments: 
A real time saver for deploying the same Debian image to all nodes in
a cluster.  Thanks guys!

From: Xavier Claessens, probtech +at+ ulb.ac.be
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:11:36 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? ~70
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4 (ubuntu breezy package) and currently migrating to 2.9.1 (ubuntu dapper package)

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom 2.6.12 kernel because older kernels have a bug in pcnet32 module.

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops
How do you boot your hosts? from floppy

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing?
 hardware are reconized but pcnet32 module is buggy is older kernels
 than 2.6.12. Not sure SATA disk drives works good with default kernel. 

What is the business of your company/organisation? Département d'informatique de l'ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Additional comments: 
FAI is great and very powerful but is still buggy. I hope 2.9.1 will
be more stable. Also it would be great to have configuration examples
for Ubuntu and not only debian.
Thanks for developing FAI !

From: Ryan Nowakowski, ryan =ad_ britestream.com
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:41:43 -0600

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 20 or so.
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel-image-2.6.8-fai_1_i386.deb from fai-kernels 1.9.1

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? manufacturing test machines

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy:
       via network card:
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD: *
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes
Which drivers are missing? none

What is the business of your company/organisation? Britestream Networks. We make SSL offload NICs.

Additional comments: 
We needed a way to consistently install test machines for manufacturing.
I started with systemimager but the latest release didn't have a 2.6
kernel which was required because of our newer hardware.  FAI was easy
to set up.

From: Andrew Ruthven, andrew.ruthven ==a=t catalyst.net.nz
Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:56:32 +1300

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 30-40
Which version of fai are you using? 2.5.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build 2.4.26

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? web server, mail server, generic server, customer premise equipment for wireless network

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: yes
   type of network card: via-rhine (Epia Mini-ITX) and whatever is on a SuperMicro P4SGR motherboard
           using FAI-CD:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE and DHCP

What is the business of your company/organisation? At a previous workplace I made extensive use of FAI.
Additional comments: 
Initially we started using it for building the wireless CPE boxes to put
out at customers sites.  However when I came to rebuild our mail server
cluster I decided to make use of my FAI build environment to make my
life easier. My use of it pretty much grew from there.

It might be of interest you that the initial wireless CPE boxes were
built by dd'ing a master HDD.  Then the company that was doing them
started using kickstart (Redhat boxes).  We then redesigned them and
started using FAI.

From: Marc SAUVEUR, marc at= 7ici.be
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:40:19 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? first 11 in 1 hour
  (march 2005), now i have installed 117 servers HP DL380 and DL 360 with succes and 25 Dell machines

Which version of fai are you using? 2.5.4 last version for Woody
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? actually i'm using 2-4-24 Fai but i m building a new kernel with support for dell 1650 and 2650

How do you boot your host?
            from floppy: Actually from floppy with static ip
       via network card: next step bootp or dhcp
   type of network card:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:

Does the default kernel recognize all your hardware?
     Which drivers are missing: drivers for lsi controller are missing it's mpt module

What is the business of your company/organisation? Internet service Provider, Belgacom NV/SA (Belgium)

From: Werner Fischer, wfischer äd thomas-krenn.com
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:47:43 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? currently about 5, number is growing
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.6.8 from fai-kernels 1.9.1

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? web server

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card:
   type of network card:
           using FAI-CD: X
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP:

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

What is the business of your company/organisation? Server distribution, Thomas-Krenn.AG

Additional comments: 
We use FAI-CD to install "pre-installed webservers", which our
customers can buy. We have included the installation of SWsoft's PLESK
control panel for webservers. You can find more details here.

FAI is a great piece of software - thank you everybody who developed it!

From: Julia Longtin, risc =äd= volumehost.com
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:16:01 -0600

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 35-40, unsure.
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4 with patches.
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.8

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
  (eg.: desktops, cluster nodes, notebooks, web server, mail server,...)
  all of the above. and then some.
  The primary DNS server of this organization is an FAI install, along with mail, ftp, www, wineserv...
  About half my workstations have been re-installed using my fai-cd.
  My robots were installed using fai-cd.
  Half my notebooks are fai-cd.

Which version of fai-kernels are you using as your install kernel?
      (eg.: kernel 2.4 from fai-kernels 1.8)
      (eg.: custom build kernel 2.6)
so far as i know, i'm using 'stock debian 2.6.8-2'

How do you boot your hosts? fai-cd exclusively. For reproducability of procedure.

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? So far, everything is supported.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Financial image processing

Additional comments: 
FAI-CD is now my primary install method, and FAI alone used to be my
primary install method on my clusters.

We use FAI for the reproducability factor. By burning a FAI-CD of our
servers/software, we can at any time revert to a previous version, or
perform disaster recovery. No "system administration" is performed on
live servers. 

I've already got my subversion account for backporting/merging my patches.

From: Petr Kubanek, petr=kubanek.net
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:52:10 +0000

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 4
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6.11

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops
How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card:
   type of network card:
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: X

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes
Which drivers are missing?

What is the business of your company/organisation? High Energy Astrophysics Department, Ondrejov Observatory, Czech Academy of Sciences

Additional comments: 
If you speak czech language:
http://www.root.cz/clanky/fai-full-automatic-installer/

From: Sirk Johannsen, sirk.johannsen _a_t minick.net
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:43:19 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? approx. 60 by now
Which version of fai are you using? 2.6.3
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6.8

How do you boot your hosts?
            from floppy: 
       via network card: X
   type of network card: see below
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: BOOTP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
  No. We had to customize our own kernel to support Broadcom Network cards (module tg3). 
Which drivers are missing? tg3

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? cluster nodes (tomcat-cluster), web server, mail server, java-application server.

What is the business of your company/organisation? Minick

Additional comments: 
We have 2 FAI Install Server (one in our Datacenter and one in our office).
Both are synchronized using rsync to be able to install any host in any location.

From: Mattias Wadenstein, maswan(a)hpc2n.umu.se
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:06:23 +0200 (MEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Between 415-420 hosts.

    The clusters:
    190 nodes dual opteron running amd64
    120 nodes dual athlon MP running woody
    100 nodes pentium4 running woody

Which version of fai are you using?  An old woody version and a fresh version that we are setting up for 
  installing sarge or a current ubuntu.

Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom 2.4 on the old machines and custom 2.6 on the new ones.

How do you boot your hosts?
             from floppy:
        via network card: yes
    type of network card: various, mostly e1000 and tg3 these days
        BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Mostly cluster nodes. We have 2-4 admin workstations 
  that are also FAI installed, and a few servers.

What is the business of your company/organisation? HPC2N - High Performance Computing Center North at Umeå University

Additional comments: 
We use FAI for a convenient and customisable mass installation of clusters.

We have these pictures that go together with some text about the clusters:
Then lots of various pictures of our hardware:

From: S. Kaikkonen, skaikkon #at# netlab.hut.fi
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:23:33 +0300 (EEST)

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Now we have only 10 nodes in the cluster, later many more
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.9.1
Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? cluster nodes / computers for networking experiments

How do you boot your hosts?
       via network card: yes (and sometimes from CD)
   type of network card: 3c905
       BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: PXE, DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? No problems

What is the business of your company/organisation?
Research/education, Helsinki University of Technology, Networking Lab

Additional comments: 
We need a small cluster to make efficient computing possible. Also
various networking related measurements and software development would
be done using the same infrastructure. Utilizing the automatic
installation and other tools / technologies the objective is to create
a system that makes it possible for different researchers to easily
configure / load a needed environment and also network topology.

From: Roberto Giana
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 07:34:07 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 3
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 1.9.1
Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? cluster nodes, single servers

How do you boot your hosts?
             from floppy:
        via network card: X
    type of network card: Onboard (RTL8139c chipset)
        BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: DHCP & PXE

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? no
Which drivers are missing? None. But IDE disk detection didn't work.
  I had do the corrections as mentioned in http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-fai@rrz.uni-koeln.de/msg02948.html 


What is the business of your company/organisation? No company, just home usage.

Additional comments: 
I'm running a bunch of small PCs, which I use for testing different
software. Sometimes as cluster, somtimes as single servers. Looking
for a simple way to set them back to a basic debian installation using
network boot I found FAI. I'm happy with it!

From: Kenny Duffus
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:09:29 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? approx 55 machines
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.6 from package 1.9.1

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
      desktops (staff and lab machines), servers

How do you boot your hosts? from floppy/cdrom image of floppy, using DHCP

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? yes

What is the business of your company/organisation? Department of Computer & Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde

Additional comments: 
much better than golden images

From: Christopher Huhn, linuxgroup =a@ gsi.de
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:11:10 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Only ~ 10 - 15 yet.
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? Custom 2.6.10 kernel.

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai?
test desktops, test cluster nodes, web server, NFS server
Yet to come: mail server, HA clusters, other services (LDAP, Radius ...)
Our production desktops and batch cluster nodes are running NFS rooted,
creation of both the NFS root images and the local /var and /tmp shall
be done with FAI in the future.
Our notebooks are installed with SuSE, maybe some day done with FAI ...
(I already had a short look into fai4rh)

How do you boot your hosts? PXE, Intel e100 and e1000 and some
Broadcom tg3, very old ones with etherboot-PXE-floppies

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware?
Which drivers are missing? I don't remember exactly, but I think XFS
was missing and the AMD64 kernel lacked a 32bit compatability option.

What is the business of your company/organisation? High energy physics research institute,
Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mbH, Darmstadt

Additional comments:
We are currently becoming quite fond of FAI.
In the long term our complete Debian installation (currently 500+
servers, desktops and cluster nodes) will be done with FAI. For our
current Woody-to-Sarge-transition we are even evaluating if a
reinstallation using FAI is more feasable then a normal upgrade from
Woody to Sarge in some cases (simple services)
It will surely become a central part of our infrastructure management
framework.

Do you have some nice pictures of your installation?
Maybe we can shoot some impressive pictures after the installation of
our 100+ new double Opteron Dual Core boxes in Q4.

From: Klaus Ita, klaus.ita =a=t ai.wu-wien.ac.at
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:54:04 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 5*5 + 2
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom built kernel (2.6)

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? desktops for
  training classroom (studends), developer tools/machines, java, openoffice, gnome, ldap-clients (authentication), nfs.

How do you boot your hosts? pxe -> dhcp

What is the business of your company/organisation? university, Institute for Information Business

Additional comments: 
We are using FAI for setting up our students PC's. We also install
win-images with fai that are prepared with sysprep. For customization
we are using a lot of cfengine that is started by FAI.

setup time for linux: ~7min

From: James Bromberger, james __@= rcpt.to
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 09:44:33 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 60-80
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.3
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? kernel 2.4.27-fai

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Web servers

   How do you boot your hosts? PXE & DHCP
   Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Probably
   Which drivers are missing? Possibly sensors (hardware monitoring)?

What is the business of your company/organisation? Web publishing and advertising

Additional comments: 
Rapid deployment of web servers

From: Daniel Hamilton
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:07:15 +0100

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Cluster currently consists of only 8 nodes (excluding Sun server) 
  ... but plans for more ... lots more ;0)

Which version of fai are you using? 2.5.2
Which version of fai-kernels are you using?
      Custom build 2.4.18 kernel for Sun UltraSparc Server.
      Custom build 2.4.18 kernel for i686 Dual Athlon FAI Server.
      Custom build 2.4.18 kernel for i686 Dual Athlon cluster nodes.
      ... I like custom.

Which types of hosts are you installing with fai? Cluster nodes.

How do you boot your hosts?
Via network card: Yes
BOOTP, PXE, DHCP: Yes
Type of network card (i686 FAI server & nodes) : Intel EEPro100 (onboard)
Type of network card (Sun DHCP,DNS,NTP,NFS... etc server) : Sun 
Happymeal and 3Com 3C905c "boomerang" (PCI Cards)

What is the business of your company/organisation? Academic

Additional comments: 
The current installation is intended as a proof of concept for the CFD 
work being done on the cluster.
To install cluster used for CFD work. FAI's great!  Cheers! :0)

From: Kalle Happonen, kalle.happonen ä|t hip.fi
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:30:12 +0300

How many hosts have you installed using fai? Around 10 cluster nodes
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? 2.4 from fai-kernels 1.9.1

How do you boot your hosts? from floppy

Does the default install kernel recognize all your hardware? Yup

What is the business of your company/organisation? Research, Helsinki Institute of Physics, Technology Programme

Additional comments: 
We use FAI to install compute nodes on a small grid cluster, and
simply reinstall compute nodes in case of problems.

Also FAI is used to reinstall a sandbox server which users may test & play
around with. If we want to keep something new even after the reinstall, 
the packages and configuration files are added simply to the FAI class.

From: Richard Wonka, richard.wonka a|t altanapharma.de
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 14:45:42 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? 20+
Which version of fai are you using? 2.8.4
Which version of fai-kernels are you using? custom build kernel 2.6

How do you boot your host?
        via network card or cd using BOOTP

Does the default kernel recognize all your hardware?  nope
          Which drivers are missing: mptscsih,aacraid

What is the business of your company/organisation? Pharmaceutical research, ALTANA Pharma AG

Additional comments: 
I had initial problems that have been solved in cooperation with the
author(s) and a great community. Most of the trouble came from having
to install very different hosts, x86 as well as amd64, with very
different hardware-setup and uses. Not your usual setup, I guess.
Also not being able to have one's own DHCP-server is a pain. We're now
installing a small cluster as well as different workstations and some
servers. All going well so far. :-)

From: Steffen Grunewald, aei.mpg.de
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 15:45:00 +0200

How many hosts have you installed using fai? more than 200
    * a small Alpha cluster: