Rapid installer for Linux distributions
Fully Automated Installation is a group of Shell and Perl scripts that install and configure a complete Linux distribution quickly on a large number of computers.
It's the oldest automated deployment system for Debian.[1]
FAI allows for installing Debian and Ubuntu distributions. But it also support CentOS, Rocky Linux and SuSe Linux.
In the past it supported Scientific Linux Cern.[2]
By default a network installation is done, but it's easy to create an installation ISO for booting from CD or USB stick.
[3]
There's a web service for FAI which is called FAI.me, which allows creating customized installation images without setting up your own FAI server.
[4]
This service supports Debian and Ubuntu.
Debian's cloud team uses FAI for creating their official cloud images.
[5]
Similar software exists for Red Hat (kickstart), SuSE (YaST and alice), Solaris (Jumpstart) and likely other operating systems.
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External links