Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 12:39:26 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.osd.bsdi.com> To: Reinoud van Leeuwen <reinoud@xs4all.nl> Cc: jkh@FreeBSD.org, alex@nait.nl, dave@nait.nl, config@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Jumpstart alike tool for FreeBSD Message-ID: <42000.962825966@localhost> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 03 Jul 2000 15:58:09 %2B0200." <200007031358.PAA04617@webmail1.xs4all.nl>
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> We talked briefly about this on the Usenix party. We are in need of > a tool for FreeBSD that will enable us to do automated installs for > a large number of FreeBSD boxes. Solaris has a product called > Jumpstart that has several nice features we would like to see on > FreeBSD. If we cannot find anything suitable we will develop it > ourselves. You said that something like that is currently being > developed for FreeBSD. Can you give us some pointers to were I can > find information? If other people are working on the same kind of > things, it would be better to work together that to try reinveting > the wheel again. Hi Guys, Sorry for the miscommunication. What I thought I said at the USENIX party was that we were intending to work on such a thing, not that such work had already started. It's my intention to do this in two phases: 1. I will work on ripping all the useful bits of code out of sysinstall for a libinstall library which handles media selection, I/O, disk labelling and filesystem creation, etc. Then I will revamp sysinstall to use this library. 2. Begin working on a jumpstart tool which takes a more "batch oriented" approach to the installation problem and also uses libinstall to do the guts of the work. Unsolved is the issue of a more comprehensive "media map file" which can be read on a given media to tell where everything, from bindist to bash, can be found on that or other related media. Then the libinstall library could even handle media change requests, e.g. requests like "please remove CD #1 (Basic Installation) from your drive and insert CD #2 (Extra Utils)." Right now, sysinstall just goes after everything on a single media item, be it a CDROM or an FTP site, and throws up its hands if it can't find it. That would be a piece which could be written by someone else while I did the libinstall work. Since this is also a fairly critical item on our current TODO lists, I intend to start the libinstall work just as soon as I return from our annual 3 day "management summit" meeting on Saturday. Sigh. I never had to deal with stuff like that as a consultant. :) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-config" in the body of the message
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