---
name: "fai-setup"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "fai-server"
version: "6.4.3"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/fai-setup"
---

# fai-setup(8)

Setup script for Fully Automatic Installation (FAI)

## NAME

fai-setup - Setup script for Fully Automatic Installation (FAI)

## SYNOPSIS

**fai-setup**

## DESCRIPTION

Fully Automatic Installation (FAI) is used to provide unattended installation of Debian GNU/Linux operating systems with a very flexible class-based system. fai-setup creates the initial NFSROOT directory and the configuration space. It sets up the NFS exports configuration file (/etc/exports), and create the initial fai user that is used for copying over the installation logs to a centralized directory on the server.  [fai-make-nfsroot(8)](/fai-make-nfsroot/8.md) is called to create the initial NFS root directory.

fai-setup should be called after each change to /etc/fai/fai.conf.

## OPTIONS

- All options are also passed to fai-make-nfsroot.

  - **-C CFDIR**

  Use CFDIR as configuration directory. Default is /etc/fai. You can also set the environment variable FAI\_ETC\_DIR.

- **-e**

  Expert mode. Do not add entries to /etc/export, do not restart the nfs server, and do not add to /var/log/fai/variables.

## SEE ALSO

This program is part of FAI (Fully Automatic Installation).  See the FAI manual for more information on how to use fai-setup.  The FAI homepage is https://fai-project.org.

- [*fai-make-nfsroot*(8)](/fai-make-nfsroot/8.md), [*exports*(5)](/exports/5.md)

  ## FILES

- */etc/fai/fai.conf*

  The FAI configuration file.

- */etc/fai/nfsroot.conf*

  The configuration file for fai-make-nfsroot.

- */etc/exports*

  The NFS configuration file for exported filesystems.

- */var/log/fai/variables*

  The script will write the values of FAI\_CONFIGDIR and FAI\_CONFIG\_SRC to this file.

## AUTHOR

Thomas Lange \<lange@cs.uni-koeln.de\>