From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 7 04:58:53 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 317A3106566B for ; Thu, 7 May 2009 04:58:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx01.qsc.de (mx01.qsc.de [213.148.129.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E61B08FC19 for ; Thu, 7 May 2009 04:58:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from r55.edvax.de (port-92-196-7-253.dynamic.qsc.de [92.196.7.253]) by mx01.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 620D13C872; Thu, 7 May 2009 06:58:51 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r55.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r55.edvax.de (8.14.2/8.14.2) with SMTP id n474wiSL019807; Thu, 7 May 2009 06:58:44 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 06:58:44 +0200 From: Polytropon To: Warren Guy Message-Id: <20090507065844.d0e90f56.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <4A025F42.50308@calorieking.com> References: <4A025F42.50308@calorieking.com> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.7 (GTK+ 2.12.1; i386-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Developing and maintaining a rapidly deployable image of an installed system X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 04:58:53 -0000 On Thu, 07 May 2009 12:10:42 +0800, Warren Guy wrote: > I'm just wondering if there is an established best practice for > developing and maintaining a rapidly deployable image of an installed > FreeBSD system? One of the common (at least I think so) methods is using the system's standard tools dump and restore. You create the installation as you need it on a separate machine or in a jailed environment, and you end up with partitions as you want them to have on the machines for deployment. Then you dump these partitions into files. On the (fresh) machines, you boot into a minimal FreeBSD system that allows you to read the dump files, from optical media, tape, or across the network. First you slice, partition and newfs the partitions (can easily be scripted if you know what you want), then you restore the partitions (as on the machine used for preparing them) from the dump files. That's for deploying. For maintaining... it's possible to use a similar method where you only need to dump and restore partitions where you did major changes. For minor ones it should be sufficient to alter files "the usual way" (can be scripted, too). > If anyone can point me towards documentation or any other resources that > might be of use I would greatly appreciate it. There has been a discussion thread some days ago on this list which covers a bit of this topic (deploying). -- Polytropon >From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...