Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 21:36:01 -0500 From: "Martin G. McCormick" <martin@server1.shellworld.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Better News For Headless Installs Message-ID: <20141024023601.C6E46228B7@server1.shellworld.net>
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I actually had some good things happen on the headless install front. I had been trying to build a FreeBSD9.1 server and nothing was working. Computer users who are blind need a way in to the system and the preferred way to do that was to build a headless installation disk which is precisely a copy of the ISO image for the release one needs with a file named loader.conf added to the boot/ directory of the disk. I had tried a memstick ISO image as this is much less trouble to build. All one has to do is use mdconfig and mount to mount the image on a FreeBSD system, then cd to your mount point/boot and add a loader.conf file there. This updates the image since it mounts RW. You can then copy the image using dd to a thumb drive like: #dd if=FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-headless-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/sdc Of course the target thumb drive may be at a different node on your system but the command will have the same format. I then used a null-modem cable to connect a Debian system equipped with speakup which is the screen reader that comes with Debian and ubuntu. One also needs a terminal program like c-kermit and then you set your terminal type to cons25. The system did come up talking via the serial port and the installer mostly works quite well except for very busy screens like the disk formatting program and the time zone setup screen. The system is fighting a regular battle to keep from working properly, but that's not due to the remote console. The only problem on busy screens is that the screen reader gets confused and it is easy to sometimes select the wrong heading and start doing the thing that was either above or below where one needed to be. I may have neglected a swap partition.The screen reader reports all kinds of spurious combinations of the field you want plus unrelated stuff from any other drives on the system. The curses weren't just in the OS today. Martin
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