Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 14:27:30 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com, rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com, phk@critter.tfs.com, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: And Now For Something Completely Different Message-ID: <199611252027.OAA15467@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <7559.848950971@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Nov 25, 96 11:42:51 am
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> > No problem, I was just thinking maybe I had not looked hard enough through > > the documentation. > > > > Some of us install lots of systems and have a preference leaning towards > > identical systems... this sounds like a useful mechanism, but I could > > not at the time make enough of the hints in the source code to use it. > > That is okay because sysinstall is pretty cool to begin with. Certainly > > I prefer it to the Solaris install! > > Perhaps we can start the documentation process by example - if you > tell me just what kind of template install you're for, I can send you > a sample config file. Paul Traina was also the principle instigator > in getting the feature put back, so maybe he wants to speak up at this > point and tell everyone how he's using it. ;-) Okay. Well, I don't really know what is possible and what is not, since I have not used the mechanism (sorry, catch-22)... Here is what would be time saving for _me_... I usually do the same thing to each FreeBSD box. I mainly want ease of maintenance, ready replaceability, and consistency. I would like to be able to specify a set of distributions to install. I usually do almost the SAME things to every box, maybe making exceptions for disk space that I feel might need to be increased for the box's specific job, etc. Comments thrown in at points where manual intervention would probably be desirable. Partition <generally select all devices but I would not mind doing this by hand. All disks/etc on my systems are FreeBSD> Label 40M / 60M swap 80M /usr 100M /usr/local 120M /var rest /home <Stop and request confirmation and/or local changes.> Distributions Custom bin compat20 compat2whatever DES des krb dict info man src lkm sys <Stop and request confirmation and/or local changes.> Media FTP Other ftp://ftp.freebsd.sol.net/pub/FreeBSD <Stop and allow selection of network interface, IP, etc> Commit <Stop and verify> Configure Console Saver Star Timeout 60 Time Zone 00:00 <does this actually DO anything??> UTC North and South America United States <scrolling to #44 is annoying> Central Yes It Looks Fine Dammit Root Password <Stop and prompt> Quit and reboot Now I will be honest: I am good enough at doing this that I can whip through it at warp speed. There are five places where it is possible (but not too likely) that I may want to make some changes, if this were to be scripted... but in reality I am not too sure how much time such scripting would save me. A friend of mine who has seen me whip through this claims I make him dizzy ;-) In any case, this is a common denominator for almost all my systems, and even for ones with X11 or full sources, I generally only allow for additional disk space and then install the stuff later. A template for this might be a real good start. The possible benefit that might be REALLY nice is that I could give certain people "almost" preconfigured boot diskettes. Please forgive me for not really understanding what is allowable and what is not, I figured I would outline as much of what I do by default and let you see how much of it could maybe fit into your mechanism. Also note that saving SOME steps is worthwhile! I have had to explain to a Novell guy in the past how to install FreeBSD. He made it through just fine since he is a smart guy and I went through and explained each step as well as I could, explaining what I was trying to do in addition to the steps I thought he needed to follow... but handing him a floppy with a shorter set of instructions would have been better. Thanks for any clues, Jordan. ... JG
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