From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 28 08:49:58 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1800416A4CE for ; Sun, 28 Dec 2003 08:49:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from mta11.adelphia.net (mta11.adelphia.net [68.168.78.205]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E959B43D31 for ; Sun, 28 Dec 2003 08:49:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com ([68.68.113.33]) by mta11.adelphia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.05 201-253-122-130-105-20030824) with ESMTP id <20031228164949.GBAD6455.mta11.adelphia.net@potentialtech.com>; Sun, 28 Dec 2003 11:49:49 -0500 Message-ID: <3FEF09AC.8070600@potentialtech.com> Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 11:49:48 -0500 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20031005 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Colin Percival References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031228030024.02d59dd8@popserver.sfu.ca> In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20031228030024.02d59dd8@popserver.sfu.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD remote install X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 16:49:58 -0000 Colin Percival wrote: > As you are all aware, many computer systems around the world are > possessed by evil penguins. It would be nice to exorcize these > evil spirits, but this can be difficult if we don't have physical > access to the machines in question. > > I've put together some code for remotely installing FreeBSD over > existing i386 Linux systems. In short, I use NetBSD's makefs tool > to build a FreeBSD disk image which boots entirely into memory, > sets up the network, and sets a root password. Providing that the > beginning of the machine's drive is quiescent (ie, if the first > partition is swap, and you've disabled swapping), you can write > this image to disk with dd, reboot, and ssh into FreeBSD. > Once you've got a complete FreeBSD filesystem running in memory, > you can slice and partition your drives and install FreeBSD > however you like; this has the added side effect of making vinum > installations much easier. > > For the code and more details, see > http://www.daemonology.net/depenguinator/ I just wanted to comment that this is _very_ cool! -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com