Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 10:31:21 +0100 From: Erik Norgaard <norgaard@locolomo.org> To: Dario Freni <saturnero@freesbie.org> Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Contacts for project idea list Message-ID: <43B109E9.8050509@locolomo.org> In-Reply-To: <20051217225939.GD9343@cvs.freesbie.org> References: <439AE13D.1040800@locolomo.org> <20051217225939.GD9343@cvs.freesbie.org>
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Dario Freni wrote: > This can be intepreted/implemented in many ways. As Alexander said, > this can be a "dummy" installer which formats, partitions and install > over the network. > > In my todo list, instead, there's (since at least one year) the idea > to implement this with FreeSBIE and BSD Installer. BSD Installer was > already ported to FreeSBIE one year ago, and the actual version of BSD > Installer works with the new version of the FreeSBIE toolkit. > > It can be nice to have a dedicated version of FreeSBIE which ships > with a dhcp server on it and can act as a PXE server, allowing clients > to netboot into BSD Installer. If you agree, we can start working on > it. Merry Christmas - Sorry for not getting back on this before. My experiene is that PXEBoot actually works quite well: It is fairly easy to create a memory disk that can be fetched with tftp. The only thing not included in the base system is a dhcp server. So, including such a setup on a FreeSBIE live CD should be trivial, the most non-trivial task I can think of is configuring dhcp for the user. However, work can be done to make it easier to use PXEBoot to install multiple systems: I know I am treading into a minefield now - sorry! 1) My idea is to exploit the install scripts. Normally the install script is in the root of the root device, but it is cumbersome to update the script on a memory disk. Instead, it would be great to have the script on the server and just specify a path in eg loader.rc. The install script should then be fetched with tftp. 2) It would be great if it was posible to create a valid install script from sysinstall - I know this is a completely different project, but maybe the idea could propagate :) The point is that, this way it would be easier for the administrator to save a system configuration and clone his systems. This would be really useful for those maintaining a large server farm or a large number of workstations, also this would be useful for recovery. Of the two items above, I think that 1) is within the scope of the proposed project, and maybe also the easier part :) Just my thoughts on where I would like to go with this project. Cheers, Erik -- Ph: +34.666334818 web: www.locolomo.org S/MIME Certificate: www.daemonsecurity.com/ca/8D03551FFCE04F06.crt Subject ID: 9E:AA:18:E6:94:7A:91:44:0A:E4:DD:87:73:7F:4E:82:E7:08:9C:72 Fingerprint: 5B:D5:1E:3E:47:E7:EC:1C:4C:C8:3A:19:CC:AE:14:F5:DF:18:0F:B9
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