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Date:      Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:31:55 +0100
From:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Erik_N=F8rgaard?= <norgaard@locolomo.org>
To:        pete wright <nomadlogic@gmail.com>
Cc:        fbsdq <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Projects List page
Message-ID:  <439ACABB.2070305@locolomo.org>
In-Reply-To: <57d710000512092223q6683431bqe6d694420286a106@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <57d710000512092223q6683431bqe6d694420286a106@mail.gmail.com>

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pete wright wrote:
> Saw the newly posted list of projects that need volunteers.  One
> project in particular caught my eye:
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/projects/ideas/#p-pxeinstaller
> (FreeBSD PXE Install support)
> 
> I do not see an email contact regarding this, has anyone started
> working something like this?

In the bottom is a list of people associated with a group of projects, 
so I guess you can write to one of them and ask and/or volunteer.

I don't know what exactly they have in mind, they write good PXE 
knowledge is required, but I see the main task to provide a good UI.

I see two things to do:

1) preconfiguring a server
2) configuring the pxe-install

1) is the easy part: You just need the live disk to be preinstalled with 
isc-dhcpd (or similar) and tftp preconfigured. I guess ftp-install would 
be the viable method using an external ftp-server, else a native ftp 
server should be preconfigured and populated with install files.

The problem is 2) It's fairly easy to create a memory disk boot image 
that is fetched with tftp.

The problem is that this contains the script file that scripts the 
installation and that script should be customizeable. The script is a 
sysinstall script and sysinstall is largely undocumented in this regard.

Further sysinstall, AFAIK, is regularly suggested for an overhaul, and 
it is at least listed for a minor update on the project list.

So, in my point of view, the obvious solution would be to work on 
sysinstall, adding an option "save configuration" which would generate 
the script. Then we only need to save it in the memory disk image.

I don't know if the listed network people are reading this, or maybe 
those who are not yet responsible for sysinstall.

But I would be interested in working on this... (well, not exactly 
sysinstall as much as the easy parts :-)

Cheers, Erik
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