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#This document is a WIP FIXME ##AFI (Automatically Fully Install) is mainly a wrapper around kickstart installations.

The idea for the name is from FAI (Fully Automatic Installer) which is mainly used for Debian-based-systems. Also some general ideas are taken from FAI.

Compareble products (which mostly have much more functionality) are: FAI, Cobbler, Foreman.

AFI is written in PHP.

It creates a boot file for iPXE (boot.ipxe.php) and a kickstart file (ks.cfg..php)

There are so many os deployment tools, why AFI?

• Installation is done via the provided (and supported) installer of the OS (that is not the case for FAI).
  • Installed system should be correctly installed:
    • no missing mountpoints,
    • no wrong boot configuration,
    • no malfunction after updates
• Installation via web-server and DHCP-server only:
  • DHCP defines a HTTP/HTTPS - location for the boot-file (boot.ipxe.php)
  • boot.ipxe.php is an iPXE-file
  • Server boots from iPXE-boot-rom (iso, usb, chainload from PXE or directly flashed into network card)
  • dynamically generated boot.ipxe.php let's:
    • server boot from hard disk, if client is configured not to be installed
    • server boot kernel+initrd from HTTP/HTTPS - location.
• Dynamically generated kickstart file (ks.cfg..php):
  • allows creating:
    • profiles for difficult %pre - scripts (used by partioning f.e.)
    • profiles for all settings in the installation (language, keyboard, bootloader, initial passwords f.e)
    • profiles for installed packages
    • profiles for used software repos(including proxy-configuration per repo)
  • from simple settings
    • in per installation-host config file or
    • default settings file

###Installation For AFI a webserver is required, which is able to serve php content.

Install a webserver with for example nginx and php.

Extract the afi archive to a web directory on that webserver

Configure AFI (afi.ini, default.conf, repos, partitioning schemes, post classes, hosts)

###BUILD the wanted version tag is referenced as <version>

mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/{SOURCES,SPECS}
cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hoonetorg/afi/<version>/afi.spec
spectool -g -C ../SOURCES -D afi.spec
rpmbuild -ba afi.spec