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

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