How to create distribution for later NFS sysinstall on other box?

[Terry Lambert]

Chris Shenton wrote:
> I expect there's a way to build a distribution on my main 5.1 system
> then use sysinstall on the target 4.x to install via NFS (or FTP
> or...) over the LAN.  I have not found any pointers on doing this in
> the Handbook or a couple quick Googles (perhaps I'm searching on the
> wrong terms).  Seems it should be something like this on the server:
> 
>       cd /usr/src
>       make distribution
> 
> I'd like to make the distribution based on my 5.1-CURRENT, rather than
> copying/creating a 5.1-RELEASE image so I won't have to do a
> subsequent update to get it CURRENT.
> 
> Any pointers? If I'm missing obvious docs, just tell me where to RTFM. :-)

I've posted about this several times.

The big trick is you have to copy the distribution sysinstall
to the target machine, mount the CDROM image over NFS, and
then run the new sysinstall on the old machine, and tell it
that the NFS server is a local disk from which you are doing
an upgrade.  This assumes sysinstall hasn't changed so much
due to new ioctl's (e.g. "GEOM") or new system calls or their
paramenter formats (e.g. "historical changes to mount(2)")
that it won't work.

If it won't work, your best bet is to NFS export your build
source and object trees, and just "make install" on each of
the target machines.

If that doesn't work, you will need to burn a CDROM, boot
from it, and you can do an NFS install/upgrade from there.

If you need step-by-step, I've posted about going from one
version of 4.x to another using the "copy over sysinstall"
method about half a dozen times to the -current list over
the past two years (I had to do it for CDROM and floppy-less
boxes for a previous employer).

-- Terry