Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 13:08:29 -0700 From: Matthew <matthew@syrah.us> To: freebsd-config@freebsd.org Subject: Extending sysinstall a la Kickstart Message-ID: <20030801200829.GA23119@silence.syrah.us>
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Hello,
I'm a new freebsd user. I recently switched from (RedHat)
Linux for various reason.
Is anyone aware of a a "Kickstart" equivalent for FreeBSD?
RedHat's Kickstart system allows you to automate the install
process. You make a single install floppy, stick it in the floppy
drive, turn on (or reboot) the computer, wait 5 to 20 minutes
(depending upon the size of the install), remove the floppy, and then
reboot into a freshly installed OS.
(Alternatively, you can have the Kickstart process rewrite the
floppy, turing it into a book disk. In this case, you don't need to
remove the floppy, and Kickstart can then automatically reboot the
machine when installation is complete. In this scenario, you can
leave floppies sitting in remote, network accessible machines. When
you want to reinstall the OS on them, you write a Kickstart image to
the floppy, reboot the server, and then simply wait, all of which can
be done remotely over the network.)
I've done a lot of searching for Kickstart equivalents for
FreeBSD, and it looks like the closest thing is /stand/sysinstall's
scripting capabilities.
I'm planning on extending /stand/sysinstall to increase the
degree to which installation can be automated. Specficially:
* Hard drive partitioning. I can press "A" both during the
primary ("slice level"?) and secondary ("partition level"?)
partitioning during a manual install. However, I cannot currently
script secondary level "auto" partitioning.
* Network configuration. I can manually configure the network
interface via sysinstall. But I cannot automate this process unless:
1. I use DHCP
2. I know the name of the ethernet device
I want to be able to specify, via a script, the IP address,
host name, domain, netmask, etc. I also to specify, via a script,
that I don't know the ethernet device name so sysinstall should just
use the first ethernet device it finds. I recognize that sysinstall
cannot always autodetect the ethernet device, so the script will fail
in these cases.
I'm pretty confident that make these extensions to sysinstall,
as they are simply extensions which allow the scripts to access
already extant sysinstall functionality.
I'd like to make them in such a way that they can be merged
into the FreeBSD project so that others have easy access to them. Are
there any guidelines I should follow? I searched the handbooks for
instructions and guidelines on becoming a FreeBSD developer, but
didn't find anything. Perhaps I missed it?
I'm planning on modifying sysinstall in 4-8-stable. It looks
like sysinstall has recently moved from /usr/src/release/sysinstall to
/usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall? Have there been other significant
changes to sysinstall recently?
Many thanks,
Matthew.
______________________________________________________________________
matthew@syrah.us
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