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 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 Set the location of the config space to URL (this sets FAI_CONFIG_SRC). Set it to "" to create  an
              ISO  image  without a config space. If not set, the value of FAI_CONFIGDIR will be used. 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.

       -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. This image file can be used to fetch  the
              nfsroot through various ways over the network.

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>

FAI 5                                               Nov 2015                                           fai-cd(8)