From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 1 00:51:50 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9529B16A4CE for ; Wed, 1 Sep 2004 00:51:50 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ds.netgate.net (ds.netgate.net [205.214.170.232]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 57D8843D45 for ; Wed, 1 Sep 2004 00:51:50 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from admin2@forkthepenguin.com) Received: (qmail 23107 invoked from network); 1 Sep 2004 00:51:50 -0000 Received: from vp4.netgate.net (ibrew@205.214.170.248) by ds.netgate.net with SMTP; 1 Sep 2004 00:51:50 -0000 Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 17:51:49 -0700 (PDT) From: admin2@forkthepenguin.com X-X-Sender: ibrew@vp4.netgate.net To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: PXE Questions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:51:50 -0000 I'm starting to use PXE to install FreeBSD servers, something I've been doing with Linux for a while. I've got installs working, but I'm running into a few flexibility issues I hope have been addressed. While I use DHCP to install the server, the server should not attempt to boot DHCP when rebooted. I've used the packageAdd mechanism to install and run a script that customizes the rc.conf file, but upon first reboot the hostname and DHCP configuration items are inserted into rc.conf below the items I added with my script. Q. How can the install be customized to cofigure rc.conf with a static IP address rather than DHCP? Failing that, how can the "first boot" configuration be disabled as to not conflict with my custom changes? I have several different server configurations I need to run, and would like to setup a per host install.cfg. RedHat's "kickstart" allows these configurations to be defined on a per IP address basis by modifying a config file. FreeBSD requires that the mfsroot image be mounted and the install.cfg file within be modified. This process would need to be done every time a server is installed rather than having a few vanilla configurations that could be called independantly (ATA vs SCSI for example). Q. Can per host configurations be used? If not, can the install.cfg file be used to retrieve this data "on the fly" i.e. : variable=`fetch http://confighost/cgi-bin/config.pl` where config.pl would be a script that could return values based on the client IP address? Is there another way to address this issue? Chris