RFC: Classes list for FAI/Lenny

The Etch installation scheme with our FAI server used one class for each type of node (NODE_COMPUTE, STORAGE, ...) but this is somehow inflexible when a mixture of classes is needed and also quite error-prone in terms of duplicated package lists. Thus, I propose to move to a modular FAI class concept, where in the end a larger number of dedicated classes compose the final class.

Service Classes

This is a sample list of possible class names:

Class name	purpose / packages in this class (example)
ARECA_4DISK_750GB_RAID6	perform any necessary actions for creating a 4 disk RAID6 array with 750 GB disks on a ARECA controller
ATLAS_CONDOR_MASTER	master node for Condor
ATLAS_CONDOR_NODE	Condor compute node
ATLAS_CONDOR_SUBMIT	submission only head nodes (remote submission) - if needed
ATLAS_MAIL_CLIENT	set-up this machine as a forward only mail client
ATLAS_MAIL_SERVER	everything about mail server in the Atlas framework
ATLAS_NIS_CLIENT	set-up for Atlas NIS clients
ATLAS_NIS_SERVER	set-up for our Atlas NIS server
DEFAULT	bare minimum list needed everywhere (vim, emacs, apt-file, htop, sysstat, iostat, ...)
DEVEL	install development packages (man pages, compilers, debugging tool, ...)
EXPOSED	this host is exposed and needs, iptables, apticron, security.debian.org,...
hostname	remember that the class hostname is always available
LDG	install LDG related things (ldg-server/client)?
LSC	lscsoft related stuff
MATLAB_BATCH	install only matalb stuff for compute nodes
MATLAB_INTERACTIVE	install interactive matlab environment
SQL_MYSQL	install mysql server
SQL_POSTGRESQL	install postgresql server
WEBSERVER	install and configure basic apache

I guess many more classes are possible, but you get the idea.

Host Classes

Unless FAI has its own way of creating dependency between classes, we probably need to write a wrapper script which maps a host class to service classes, e.g.

Host Class	Service classes
ATLAS_COMPUTENODE	DEFAULT ATLAS_MAIL_CLIENT ATLAS_NIS_CLIENT ATLAS_CONDOR_NODE LSC MATLAB_BATCH ...

-- CarstenAulbert - 06 Feb 2009