Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 09:46:10 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@freebsd.org>, Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com>, randi@freebsd.org, David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org> Subject: Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create & use multiple slices on a disk? Message-ID: <201003080946.10876.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <201003060729.01225.jpaetzel@freebsd.org> References: <20100304213329.GJ57205@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <7d6fde3d1003060041p225e8718n29a8e75a718237a@mail.gmail.com> <201003060729.01225.jpaetzel@freebsd.org>
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On Saturday 06 March 2010 8:28:54 am Josh Paetzel wrote: > I'd also like to mention John saying you can build a custom mfsroot to use > additional tools during install...I go a different tack on this. I'm a huge > fan of python, and like to use it for installers. Rather than build a custom > mfsroot with python what I prefer to do is build a chroot that the target > machine boots diskless off. Then I chroot into that directory and install > whatever tools I want using ports/packages. I find that getting FreeBSD to > boot diskless is so easy that I've had it accidentally happen more than once > when I wanted something else to happen. Installing ports in a chroot is also > pretty trivial. Building a custom mfsroot has a bit of a learning curve with > a fairly expensive trial and error penalty. I agree that building a custom mfsroot from scratch would be a bit of a PITA. I generally cheat by just patching src/release/<arch>/boot_crunch.conf to add the tools I want to use. I find dialog(1) useful for popping up sysinstall-style dialog boxes from shell scripts. I have also seen folks build a completely separate MFS root separate from the release process. While that was more tedious to get started, it was certainly more flexible. -- John Baldwin
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