From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Feb 24 16:34:36 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA17746 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 16:34:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA17716 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 16:34:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA10329; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:04:06 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) id LAA19262; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:04:05 +1030 (CST) (envelope-from grog) Message-ID: <19980225110405.40141@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:04:05 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: gkshenaut@ucdavis.edu, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: roll-in installation? References: <199802232215.OAA06420@myrtle1.bogs.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89i In-Reply-To: <199802232215.OAA06420@myrtle1.bogs.org>; from Greg Shenaut on Mon, Feb 23, 1998 at 02:14:48PM -0800 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, 23 February 1998 at 14:14:48 -0800, Greg Shenaut wrote: > Is there a mechanism already in place which would allow a hands-off > roll-in installation from SCSI tape of a FreeBSD distribution onto > a virgin machine? What I have in mind would be auto-generating a > tape image of the model system using some combination of dump, tar, > and dd, along with parameter blocks containing information for > fdisk/mkfs/format. Then you boot to a floppy containing code which > can deal with the tape; it rolls it in, and, presto changeo, you've > got a complete, bootable, system only needing its rc.conf file > edited in order to run. (Assuming the model has the same hardware > as the target, of course.) > > Has anyone done this? What I've done is to make one installation, copy a disk image to tape, and then restore it to other disks, thus creating a complete clone of the first machine. This sounds like it would fit your bill. The problem was, I did it under BSD/OS, and I ran into trouble when I tried it on FreeBSD a couple of years ago. I don't know whether it's since possible, but there are some problems related to writing to a raw disk. You could try it. To back up a complete disk to tape, # dd if=/dev/rsd0c of=/dev/rst0 bs=32b To restore: # dd of=/dev/rsd0c if=/dev/rst0 bs=32b If it doesn't work, please tell me and I'll try to work out why not. Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message