From owner-freebsd-sparc64@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Oct 10 17:02:01 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 240B5106568B for ; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:02:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from mail-gw1.york.ac.uk (mail-gw1.york.ac.uk [144.32.128.246]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B01888FC1E for ; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:02:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-gw6.york.ac.uk (mail-gw6.york.ac.uk [144.32.129.26]) by mail-gw1.york.ac.uk (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id n9AH1vQH022773; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:01:57 +0100 (BST) Received: from ury.york.ac.uk ([144.32.108.81]) by mail-gw6.york.ac.uk with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1MwfKP-0004jd-5n; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:01:57 +0100 Received: from ury.york.ac.uk (localhost.york.ac.uk [127.0.0.1]) by ury.york.ac.uk (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id n9AH1ujo019103; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:01:56 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from localhost (gavin@localhost) by ury.york.ac.uk (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) with ESMTP id n9AH1uaf019100; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:01:56 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) X-Authentication-Warning: ury.york.ac.uk: gavin owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:01:56 +0100 (BST) From: Gavin Atkinson X-X-Sender: gavin@ury.york.ac.uk To: Duncan Hutty In-Reply-To: <4ACFECE6.30902@allgoodbits.org> Message-ID: <20091010175525.E80896@ury.york.ac.uk> References: <4ACFECE6.30902@allgoodbits.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-York-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-York-MailScanner-From: gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk Cc: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: automated installations X-BeenThere: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the Sparc List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:02:01 -0000 On Fri, 9 Oct 2009, Duncan Hutty wrote: > I have looked into automating installation of freebsd using: > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/pxe/article.html > and > http://www.locolomo.org/pub/pxeboot/index.html > > to achieve a setup where a new client can PXE boot into a sysinstall scripted > installation process. Everything that I can find refers to i386/amd64 > architectures. > > Has this also been done for sparc64? I assume that it can if I can create a > pxeboot loader for sparc64 as described in > http://www.locolomo.org/pub/pxeboot/pxeboot.html but since I'm rather new at > this, I thought I'd ask if anyone has tried this before I spend too much time > on it. You'll also presumably need a network card that supports PXE booting on sparc64. I suspect this will be a challenge - as far as I understand it, the boot ROM on PXE network cards contain i386 code. However, I'm not sure why you'd want to do this. You can easily boot from the network and install an OS using nothing more than the standard OpenFirmware interface. Although I can't actually see any proper documentation of this on the FreeBSD website, http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/sparc64/install.html should be enough for you to figure it out. Thanks, Gavin