Fully Automatic Installation

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.

References
  1. Hertzog, Raphaël; Mas, Roland. "The Debian Administrator's Handbook".
  2. Lange, Thomas. "CentOS and Scientific Linux Cern installations with FAI".
  3. "Create a bootable Linux installer with customizations on a USB Flash Drive with Fully Automatic Installer (FAI)".
  4. Munro, Andrew. "Build Your Own Automated Debian Install ISO Using FAI".
  5. "Building cloud images".
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