Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 09:03:48 +0200 From: Jonathan McKeown <jonathan+freebsd-questions@hst.org.za> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Cannot create custom FreeBSD 7.0 install CD for serial console Message-ID: <200810020903.49117.jonathan%2Bfreebsd-questions@hst.org.za> In-Reply-To: <48E3DCB1.3010009@telus.net> References: <48E345AF.6050409@telus.net> <20081001112826.GA20013@icarus.home.lan> <48E3DCB1.3010009@telus.net>
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On Wednesday 01 October 2008 22:25:21 Carl wrote: > Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 02:41:03AM -0700, Carl wrote: > >> I've been trying to create a modified FreeBSD 7.0 install CD that will > >> allow me to do installations entirely via the serial console on a > >> headless system. Lots of digging on the Internet, reading the handbook, > >> and I've gotten nowhere fast. > > > > Try this: > > > > http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html > > I was already aware of that solution, but it's not for me. There are > times when I need to do the install and setting up a DHCP server et al > is not viable. Installing FreeBSD via the network has no benefits for me > and I will not be trying to install remotely. All I need is to be able > to do a simple install using the local serial console because a keyboard > and monitor is not practical in the situation. Can anyone tell me where > the mistake is in my process? Look back through the list archives: Martin McCormick and I had a long discussion about this about a year ago (I think at least some of it ended up on this list). Here's an extract from one of the messages: On a system running 6.2-RELEASE, with a 6.2-RELEASE Disc 1 in the CD drive but not mounted: mkdir serialcd tar xvfC /dev/acd0 serialcd These two commands created a directory tree in serialcd containing most of the contents of the CD. There was a ``tar ignoring out-of-order file'' error, and when I mounted the CD and ran diff -qr /cdrom serialcd it reported that RELNOTES.TXT differed - in fact the version in the serialcd directory turned out to have zero length. [I suspect you could probably do this comparison quicker with mtree, and I never did bother to fix it or find out why it was happening] I edited serialcd/boot/loader.conf to include the line console="comconsole" I then ran mkisofs -J -r -b boot/cdboot -no-emul-boot -o serialcd.iso serialcd and got an ISO image, serial.iso, which is about 600MB. The only drawback with this method is that the serial console only cuts in just before the boot menu. I suspect that if you wanted to have a serial console for every stage of the boot you would need to mess about with the ramdisk image on the CD. HTH Jonathan
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