That is, like you do with kickstart on Redhat or autoyast in SuSE or jumpstart in Solaris? The OS docs do not seem to answer that simple question.
Asked
Active
Viewed 1,135 times
2
-
This might be helpful for you: http://serverfault.com/questions/310042/automated-installation-of-freebsd – Farhan Nov 24 '12 at 11:59
-
@Frank This might not apply to FreeBSD 9, because of the major changes to the installer. – Michael Hampton Nov 24 '12 at 14:00
1 Answers
4
Unfortunately, the new installer doesn't have much in the way of automation. This will hopefully be fixed in the near future.
The good news is it's not doing anything terribly complicated, so you can write your own "installer" easily. Just netboot (well documented), then write a shell script to do all the partitioning/formatting you want/need and un-tar the distributions onto the disk, do a little setup (users, fstab, network, etc.) and you're good.
I've done this before for the old installer because the automation there wasn't flexible enough for my needs. I can share the script if you like, but it will need updating for the new dist file names.
To some who are used to the other automation systems you mention, this may sound like a huge pain and primitive, but really, it's actually easier, the netboot setup is basically the same work and you get a standard shell scripting environment and can do whatever you want.
Steve Wills
- 685
- 3
- 6
-
I just found out, netbooting to a RAM disk is what the "cool kids" are doing these days. :) I'm used to netbooting an NFS dir. Take a look [here](http://www.catpa.ws/freebsd-pxe-netboot-installation/) and [here](http://blogs.freebsdish.org/brd/2012/05/08/scripted-install-of-freebsd-9/) Also, there's a pc-sysinstall in base now, which isn't used by default, but is usable, you may have luck with automating with that. – Steve Wills Nov 24 '12 at 20:28