From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 30 10:19:04 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 290BB16A417 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:19:04 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from danny@cs.huji.ac.il) Received: from cs1.cs.huji.ac.il (cs1.cs.huji.ac.il [132.65.16.10]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D2C7013C457 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:19:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from danny@cs.huji.ac.il) Received: from pampa.cs.huji.ac.il ([132.65.80.32]) by cs1.cs.huji.ac.il with esmtp id 1JKA22-000KMH-E2; Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:19:02 +0200 X-Mailer: exmh version 2.7.2 01/07/2005 with nmh-1.2 To: Jeremy Chadwick In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:07:26 -0800 . Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:19:02 +0200 From: Danny Braniss Message-ID: Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:19:04 -0000 Hi Jeremy, I'm very glad that you a) can write! b) that you are actually doing something with respect to the zillions of missguided how-to's :-) Having some experience with the subject, and please, don't read me wrong, I see some different approaches: - indeed this IS the 21'st century, and it's unbelivable that we still have to deal with baudrates! (why can't they be more like modems? autosense:-) - newer servers don't have serial anymore :-(, the have IPMI/ILO/etc some only have com2 what im trying to say, is that hard coding where the console is is a 'problem' It's my belief that the setting of the console can be done via DHCP - at the moment I can select the com1/2 - sio.0/sio.1 - via dhcp. the other item I would like to raise, is the way we do it here. 1st: I boot the new host diskless, this allows us to find out quickly if all hardware is working, using a tested root/kernel - since DHCP/TFTP/NFS are working, it takes only a few minutes to bring up a new host set it to boot pxe add the mac address to the dhcp.conf and reboot 2nd: if/and when we decide to make the host 'stand-alone', we do sysinstall to partition the disk (or via bsdlabel if you are good at maths) cd /mnt-root rsh -n server dump 0f - /the/root/partition | restore rf - change the bios setting to boot off disk (or if you have the console, reboot and hit ESC when doing dhcp ...) ok, so i fibbed a bit :-), there are some small 'configurables'(*) missing, but I hope you get the idea. Cheers, danny PS: *: like setting a diskless setup, which is rather simple and gladly can try to explain so that you can the write it out in readable english :-)