From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Sep 20 06:57:06 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id GAA15597 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 06:57:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from garion.hq.ferg.com (pm1-00.wmbg.widomaker.com [204.17.220.100]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id GAA15559 for ; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 06:57:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from garion.hq.ferg.com (localhost.hq.ferg.com [127.0.0.1]) by garion.hq.ferg.com (8.7.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id JAA04635 for ; Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:56:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:56:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Branson Matheson X-Sender: branson@garion.hq.ferg.com To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Installation via netboot. Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk After all the work at trying to find a good way to install when having a non standard configuration... I am gonna try somthing new and if it works.. I would be interested in standardizing and possibly including in the next release. There are a number of reasons that we cannot create a boot kernel that is large enough to handle all the differences in hardware. ( arguably we cannot create _any_ kernel to handle the differences. ) however with a running machine, we can create a kernel that will probably work ( unless it is using really weird hardware. ) unfortunately that kernel may be too big to put on a floppy. So I am thinking that a possiblity for large sites would be to create an installation server.. that would netboot a prospective client... and install from there. The advantages are obvious.. we can now mount a much larger space on the client via NFS. We will have more tools available to us to make the install easier... and prettier... we can even use X. So I am playing around with this now. Mainly because I havn't found a better way to do it... but if there is interest... I would be willing to packageize somthing like this up. What I need now though is some information about the current installation process.. what it does.. keyfiles.. locations ..etc.. if anyone has any pointers to this information I would be grateful. -branson ============================================================================= Branson Matheson | Ferguson Enterprises | If Pete and Repeat were System Administrator | W: (804) 874-7795 | sittin on a fence and Pete Unix, Perl, WWW | branson@widomaker.com | fell off, who is left?