Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 18:05:55 -0500 From: Rick Miller <vmiller@hostileadmin.com> To: Felipe Agnelli Barbosa <no.molas@gmail.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Automatic Installation Message-ID: <CAHzLAVH6%2BZMHR_wQtBhnySAhevYqS7jvQJ0=fuCeQMfN3scKWg@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CAD7yO6zfr6s8A4ZyubLFdR5en-UTcF0_qZbTRwgNyOc9adBdMg@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAD7yO6zfr6s8A4ZyubLFdR5en-UTcF0_qZbTRwgNyOc9adBdMg@mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 12:46 PM, Felipe Agnelli Barbosa <no.molas@gmail.com > wrote: > Hi guys, > > I'm finding a way to automate the installation from the FreeBSD server, > with PXE. > I saw some examples like with PXE/TFTP, dhcp, nfs and sysinstall, another > examples with Cobbler(but until version 9.0[0]). > > So, what i would to know is your experience about it and what you guys > think the best way to automate the process of installation from FreeBSD. > Maybe I will join the Puppet or Chef in that process. At a high level, there's no difference between a PXE auto install between 8.x and 10.x. DHCP, TFTP, and network accessible media are all that are needed. The differences are in the low level implementations and tools. A FreeBSD PXE Workflow diagram[1] (see references) illustrates the overall flow. The diagram specifically refers to an 8.x implementation, but also applies to 10.x just with different tools. I've implemented this with, both, FreeBSD 8.x and 10.x, but skipped 9.x for various reasons. My blog[2] has a number of posts[3] related to auto installing FreeBSD that are written specifically for 8.x, but some of the content is still relevant for 10.x. Time has been the biggest reason nothing has been posted about my experiences with 10.x. Cobbler was the platform used and, IIRC, the only real change necessary for 10.x was to update the distro signatures. The patch was not submitted back due to time pressure and the implementation was sub-optimal. Time pressure has also prevented retrofitting. 8.x was implemented using a customized bootonly ISO to fire up an automated sysinstall, but 10.x introduced bsdinstall and a bug[4] that prevented the bootonly ISO from working. So, the 10.x implementation used a customized mfsBSD[5] image implementing automated bsdinstall. The installerconfig implemented here is custom and written in such a manner that it bypasses bsdinstall's main functions, but this is not required. It was implemented this way to leverage features of Cobbler that enabled more dynamic control of installations via Cobbler. The bsdinstall man page[6] covers scripting an install. Cobbler provides management of DHCP and hosts the iPXE, mfsBSD, and installation media. iPXE is transferred via TFTP and retrieves mfsBSD over HTTP which, in turn, runs bsdinstall and installs a binary distribution fetched via HTTP from Cobbler. The DHCP server responds with a filename for the client to download. [1] http://hostileadmin.com/images/FreeBSD_PXE_Install_Workflow.gif [2] http://blog.hostileadmin.com/ [3] http://blog.hostileadmin.com/?s=cobbler [4] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=190939 [5] http://mfsbsd.vx.sk [6] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=bsdinstall HTH -- Take care Rick Miller
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