From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Feb 24 17:19:02 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA25584 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:19:02 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from bogslab.ucdavis.edu (root@bogslab.ucdavis.edu [128.120.162.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA24871 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:17:06 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from greg@bogslab.ucdavis.edu) Received: from myrtle1.bogs.org (root@myrtle1.bogs.org [198.137.203.39]) by bogslab.ucdavis.edu (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA13599 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:17:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from myrtle1.bogs.org (greg@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by myrtle1.bogs.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id RAA09958 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:15:16 -0800 Message-Id: <199802250115.RAA09958@myrtle1.bogs.org> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: roll-in installation? In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:04:05 +1030." <19980225110405.40141@freebie.lemis.com> Reply-To: gkshenaut@ucdavis.edu Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:14:53 -0800 From: Greg Shenaut Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <19980225110405.40141@freebie.lemis.com>, Greg Lehey cleopede: >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'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. Yes, I thought of this, but hadn't tried it because I have no tape drive which can hold a whole disk image. Maybe I should just go out and buy one, but I am exploring trying to zero all free blocks to reduce random bytes and then writing out the image using a compression filter. BTW, in an earlier message I asked whether there was any way to zero all the free blocks in a file system, and, just minutes after sending the message, I realized that a three or four line C program which opens a file for writing, writes zeroes to it until a write error occurs, then unlinks it, should do the trick. In fact, "dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar bs=32k ; rm foobar" would be even easier. Then, just follow this with "dd if=/dev/rXd0 | compress -c > /dev/rst0" or whatever. -Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message