NAME

       fai-cd - make a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick that performs an FAI

SYNOPSIS

       fai-cd [OPTION] -m MIRROR ISOFILE
       fai-cd [OPTION] -B FILE
       fai-cd [OPTION] -d URL
       fai-cd [OPTION] -S IMAGEFILE

DESCRIPTION

       This  command  creates  a  bootable  ISO  CD-ROM  image  that performs the fully automatic
       installation from CD-ROM without an install server. The ISO image will be written to FILE.
       To create the image, the command needs the NFSROOT, the configuration space and optionally
       a partial mirror, which is created by fai-mirror. The ISO image will contain a  compressed
       squashfs filesystem. This hybrid CD image can also be written to an USB stick using dd(1).

OPTIONS

       -A     Create  a  boot  only  CD  image  (also  usable for an USB stick) with autodiscover
              function. The CD will scan the subnet for a FAI server. By default it shows a  menu
              with  all profiles available from which you can select a type of installation. This
              image only needs 25MB.  You can add the -J option to make the image smaller.

       -B     Create a boot only ISO image which does a network installation. It does not include
              the  nfsroot,  the  partitial  mirror  and  the  config  space;  however  for it to
              automatically initiate the installation -d has to be  set.  By  default  CONFIG_SRC
              will be empty.

       -b     After creating the ISO image burn it by calling wodim(1) (a version of cdrecord).

       -C CFDIR
              Use CFDIR as the configuration directory. Default is /etc/fai. You can also set the
              environment variable FAI_ETC_DIR.

       -d URL Do not include the config space in the image and set the  location  of  the  config
              space  to  URL. This sets FAI_CONFIG_SRC in the grub config, which is obtained from
              the FAI configuration dir (see -C). Set it to "" to not set FAI_CONFIG_SRC. If  not
              set, the config space is taken from FAI_CONFIGDIR and copied to /var/lib/fai/config
              in the image. Currently no file: is allowed  here,  instead  set  FAI_CONFIGDIR  in
              fai.conf(5).

       -e     Exclude  the  directory /var/tmp from the nfsroot. You may put the file base.tar.xz
              in the configuration space into the subdirectory basefiles. This option  will  save
              about  50MB  of  disk space. This option will exclude the directory even when -H is
              given.

       -f     Force removal of an existing ISO image before creating a new one.

       -g FILE
              Use FILE as grub grub.cfg file. The script will look for FILE in CFDIR. If FILE  is
              located  in another directory then a full path must be specified. If not specified,
              use /etc/fai/grub.cfg.

       -h     Show simple help and version.

       -H     Do not hide directories. Using this option will consume about 45MB more disk  space
              on  your  media. By default, some directories like man pages and locales are hidden
              and will not be put onto the CD or the USB stick.

       -J     Use xz compression when calling mksquashfs. Default is gzip.

       -M     Do not add the package mirror to the CD. Packages that would be  fetched  from  the
              mirror  are  obtained  from the normal sources configured elsewhere, usually remote
              repositories.

       -m DIRECTORY
              Use DIRECTORY as partial FAI mirror. This option is mandatory, unless you use -M or
              -B.

       -S     Create  a  squashfs  image  file  instead of a complete iso. The image contains the
              nfsroot and can be fetched through various ways over the network. For  an  example,
              see the section "FAI without NFS" in the FAI Guide.

EXAMPLES

       After you've created a mirror with fai-mirror in /media/mirror, you can create a CD using:

          # fai-cd -m /media/mirror fai-cd.iso

       If  you  want  to  create a bootable USB stick (here /dev/sdf) , write the CD image to the
       stick via dd(1).

          # dd if=fai-cd.iso of=/dev/sdf bs=1M

       It is possible to install over the network without using NFS, i.e. by getting the  nfsroot
       via  an  http  request.  To  do so you have to create a squashfs image using the following
       command:

          # fai-cd -S squashfs.img

       In addition to that you can create said image without a config space and without a mirror.
       This is useful for when you want to avoid creating a new image after modifying your config
       space or updating your mirror:

          # fai-cd -d "" -SMeJ squashfs.img

       To fetch the image via http, use the following kernel command line option:

          root=live:http://your_server_or_IP/path/to/squashfs.img

       Create the autodiscover boot image:

          # fai-cd -JAg /etc/fai/grub.cfg.autodiscover fai-autod.iso

NOTES

       Additional kernel command line options can be found in the man page of  dracut.cmdline(7).
       fai-cd  needs  enough  disk  space in TMPDIR (/tmp by default) for creating the compressed
       filesystem. You may want to set it to another directories, before calling fai-cd.

SEE ALSO

       fai-mirror(1)

       mksquashfs(1)

FILES

       /etc/fai/fai.conf
              The FAI configuration file.
       /etc/fai/grub.cfg
              The default grub2 menu configuration file for fai-cd.

AUTHOR

       Thomas Lange <lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de>