From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 10 23:30:34 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4AC216A416 for ; Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:30:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from howie@thingy.com) Received: from mail.thingy.com (wotsit.thingy.com [212.21.100.67]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62F3113C428 for ; Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:30:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from howie@thingy.com) Received: (qmail 81208 invoked by uid 0); 10 Jan 2007 23:30:33 +0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.1.13?) (howie@thingy.com@212.21.124.49) by wotsit3.thingy.com with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 10 Jan 2007 23:30:33 +0000 Message-ID: <45A5770F.6060404@thingy.com> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:30:23 +0000 From: Howard Jones User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (Windows/20061207) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jay Chandler References: <73387c420701071410p710a3436gdecda61d57643950@mail.gmail.com> <45A55416.4060203@netfence.it> <45A55C93.3020402@thingy.com> <45A56C3B.4070908@chapman.edu> In-Reply-To: <45A56C3B.4070908@chapman.edu> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.94.1.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Why is sysinstall considered end-of-life? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:30:35 -0000 Jay Chandler wrote: > I've been trying to script an install for FreeBSD since I just had a > bunch of servers dropped on me-- may I ask how you did yours? Roughly speaking, I started with this document: http://www.tnpi.biz/computing/freebsd/pxe-netboot.shtml and this document: http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/pxe/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pxe/article.html and the example install.cfg in /usr/src/(wherever it is)/sysinstall and used pkgmaker.sh to make my own post-install package. The package is essentially my own copies of rc.conf.local, plus any extra config files, and a 'post' shell-script that uses sed & friends to make modify the other mods I want (mainly things like enabling serial console, remote syslog, disabling ssh password logins). The install.cfg pulls any standard packages you want from the central server. You might need to "make package" or download additional packages for some stuff, and update the INDEX appropriately. I also had to mess around a little to make myself a qmail package, since that's actually not allowed to be distributed. Mostly though, it's just a copy of the -RELEASE CD with the INDEX run through some basic awk. What I have now is a DHCP/TFTP/NFS server with a list of MAC addresses and IPs that it's allowed to install to (so it doesn't accidently re-install a machine that gets it's BIOS boot order screwed up). When we get new systems, boot them once to get the MAC address, then a second time to start the PXE install. They're ready to go in about 6 minutes, and mail me to tell me they've completed their first boot. It wouldn't be much harder to add machine-specific scripts, although I don't bother. It helps to standardise hardware, so that it's always em0 and da0s1 that you want to configure/format. The most annoying parts were finding good PXE support on the original servers I tried this with (HP LPrs), and getting my install.cfg *just right*. The first one was solved by EOLing our LPrs, and the latter by swearing and reading the source code for parts of sysinstall. My main wish for improving it is to be able to make my own sub-releases with current patches and current packages and still be able to use freebsd-update somehow, which I think is not possible. I could write it up, but it's very close to the two docs I mentioned up there. Howie