From owner-freebsd-newbies Thu Jul 30 15:35:16 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA09813 for freebsd-newbies-outgoing; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:35:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA09807 for ; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:35:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.8.8/8.8.8) id HAA15002; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 07:58:32 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Message-ID: <19980730075832.25906@nothing-going-on.org> Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 07:58:32 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: Sean Harding , Stuart Krivis Cc: Rainer M Duffner , freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What tipped the balance Reply-To: nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Sean Harding on Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 12:05:27PM -0700 Organization: Nik at home, where there's nothing going on Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 12:05:27PM -0700, Sean Harding wrote: > On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Stuart Krivis wrote: > > Being able to "boot net" is not a reason for choosing a Sun over a PC. > > You wanna bet? How many machines do you deal with? Anything like JumpStart > for PCs? If you want to figure out how to efficiently install a new OS on > many machines with FreeBSD and PC hardware, let me know. [Note: This is in theory, I may have got a couple of steps slightly wrong, but this is roughly how you'd do it. This is also off topic (IMHO) for -newbies -- I'm answering it there because that's where the topic came up, but I've set reply-to back to me.] 1. Put the FreeBSD source code somewhere handy, like a local NFS or FTP server. 2. Make a customised boot.flp. In particular, you want to replace the supplied install.cfg (for a sample, look in /usr/src/release/sysinstall) with one that will do the installation without prompting. 3. Clone this boot.flp onto as many other floppies as you want. 4. Boot your machines from these floppies, and watch them automatically download and install FreeBSD for you. Optionally, they can even automatically install packages as well. That assumes that the hardware on your machines (in particular, the disk geometries) is sufficiently similar that you can encapsulate it in one copy of install.cfg. If you've got different classes of machine then obviously you'll need different classes of install.cfg. N -- Work: nik@iii.co.uk | FreeBSD + Perl + Apache Rest: nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk | Remind me again why we need Play: nik@freebsd.org | Microsoft? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message