Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:37:02 -0800 (PST) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> To: forrie@forrie.com (Forrest Aldrich) Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Streamlining FreeBSD installations across many machines Message-ID: <200002251737.JAA70913@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000225102306.00c59600@216.67.12.69> from Forrest Aldrich at "Feb 25, 2000 10:23:37 am"
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> Perhaps this would be of interest in CURRENT issues: > > > We have several servers that we plan on deploying across the US. Their > purpose in life is network status and monitoring. The hardware profiles > are exactly the same... > > Currently, we're using DD to mirror a disk image onto a new installation, > and them nanually tweaking all the necessary configurations. It's > tedious, and is going to get hellish with the amount we plan on deploying. A much faster way to do this is to just dd the first few megabytes of the disk (dd if=foo of=/dev/rXXd bs=32768 count=1024). Then use dump | restore to populate the disk. (We actually have 3.x and 4.x recent build filesystems that are built weekly on a master loading machine just for this purpose.) We mass produce system disk this way and it is much faster than a whole disk image operation especially when dealing with drives much larger than 2G bytes. > I'm wondering if there might not be a way to streamline this install > process, such that a boot floopy and script could be created to take a > minimum amount of information, and then "do the right thing" as for the > install. Things like putting in the packet filters, the kernel, IP > config, etc. > > Surely someone has done this before...? We do it on a weekly basis, 4 to 32 disks at a time... > Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Hope this gives you some ideas... -- Rod Grimes - KD7CAX @ CN85sl - (RWG25) rgrimes@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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