Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 23:55:24 +0930 (CST) From: listone@deathbeforedecaf.net To: BSD baby <bsdlap@hitmedia.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: setting up many FreeBSD boxes at once... advice? Message-ID: <200304261425.h3QEPOP2000394@goo.0x7e.net> In-Reply-To: <20030423010932.GA869@mail.hitmedia.com> References: <20030423010932.GA869@mail.hitmedia.com>
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> I'm going to be setting up 6 identical FreeBSD boxes at the same time. > (Workstation boxes inside our office.) > > Each one with the exact same setup. Same ports installed, etc. > > Anyone whose done this before have any advice? I can't help you with distributed ports, but I have done some work on auto-installs. The manpage for sysinstall(8) talks about a config file, which has the default name install.cfg. With this, you can specify disk partitioning, labelling & distribution. You can also add packages if they're on the install media. Here's the one I use for my webserver: # disk format disk=ad0 partition=exclusive diskPartitionEditor # disk slices ad0s1-1=ufs 262144 / 1 # 128M + soft updates ad0s1-2=swap 262144 none # 128M ad0s1-3=ufs 262144 /var 1 # 128M + soft updates ad0s1-4=ufs 2097152 /usr 1 # 1G + soft updates ad0s1-5=ufs 0 /home 1 # free + soft updates diskLabelEditor # install system distSetDeveloper mediaSetCDROM installCommit # install packages package=lynx-2.8.4.1c packageAdd package=sudo-1.6.6 packageAdd And the one for my workstation (dual booting with Win2k): # disk format disk=ad0 partition=existing bootManager=none diskPartitionEditor # disk slices ad0s1-1=ufs 4194304 / 1 # 2G + soft updates ad0s1-2=swap 2097152 none # 1G ad0s1-3=ufs 4194304 /var 1 # 2G + soft updates ad0s1-4=ufs 4194304 /usr 1 # 2G + soft updates ad0s1-5=ufs 0 /home 1 # free + soft updates diskLabelEditor # install system distSetEverything mediaSetCDROM installCommit # install packages package=lynx-2.8.4.1c packageAdd package=sudo-1.6.6 packageAdd To use the config file, copy it onto a floppy. Then boot from the CD-ROM and select Load Config File from the main install menu. If all is correct, you can come back in half an hour to a freshly built system. I use this to re-install my handful of FreeBSD boxes every time a new version comes out. With 6 floppies and 6 install CDs, you could even do it in parallel, although a network install may make more sense in this case. (To take the idea further, I have some scripts that run on the first boot to setup the system files and download a custom kernel using fetch(1) - but they're not particularly portable at the moment.) Using the environment variables in the ports(7) manpage, you should be able to use a local server for distfiles. This would be more robust than sharing the /usr filesystem, but would still save your bandwidth. Hope this helps. Rob.
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