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Date:      Thu, 30 Jul 1998 07:58:32 +0100
From:      Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk>
To:        Sean Harding <sharding@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>, Stuart Krivis <stuart@apk.net>
Cc:        Rainer M Duffner <Rainer.Duffner@konstanz.netsurf.de>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: What tipped the balance
Message-ID:  <19980730075832.25906@nothing-going-on.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.00.9807291155550.4654-100000@gutenberg.uoregon.edu>; from Sean Harding on Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 12:05:27PM -0700
References:  <Pine.GSO.3.95.980729143502.1002F-100000@junior.apk.net> <Pine.SGI.4.00.9807291155550.4654-100000@gutenberg.uoregon.edu>

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On Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 12:05:27PM -0700, Sean Harding wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Stuart Krivis wrote:
> > Being able to "boot net" is not a reason for choosing a Sun over a PC.
> 
> You wanna bet? How many machines do you deal with? Anything like JumpStart
> for PCs? If you want to figure out how to efficiently install a new OS on
> many machines with FreeBSD and PC hardware, let me know. 

[Note: This is in theory, I may have got a couple of steps slightly wrong,
       but this is roughly how you'd do it. This is also off topic (IMHO)
       for -newbies -- I'm answering it there because that's where the 
       topic came up, but I've set reply-to back to me.]

  1. Put the FreeBSD source code somewhere handy, like a local NFS or
     FTP server.

  2. Make a customised boot.flp. In particular, you want to replace the
     supplied install.cfg (for a sample, look in /usr/src/release/sysinstall)
     with one that will do the installation without prompting.

  3. Clone this boot.flp onto as many other floppies as you want.

  4. Boot your machines from these floppies, and watch them automatically
     download and install FreeBSD for you. Optionally, they can even
     automatically install packages as well.

That assumes that the hardware on your machines (in particular, the disk
geometries) is sufficiently similar that you can encapsulate it in one 
copy of install.cfg. If you've got different classes of machine then
obviously you'll need different classes of install.cfg.

<snip the rest>

N
-- 
Work: nik@iii.co.uk                       | FreeBSD + Perl + Apache
Rest: nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk    | Remind me again why we need
Play: nik@freebsd.org                     | Microsoft?

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