Scripting sysinstall(8) to create & use multiple slices on a disk?

[John Baldwin]

On Saturday 06 March 2010 8:28:54 am Josh Paetzel wrote:
> I'd also like to mention John saying you can build a custom mfsroot to use 
> additional tools during install...I go a different tack on this.  I'm a huge 
> fan of python, and like to use it for installers.  Rather than build a custom 
> mfsroot with python what I prefer to do is build a chroot that the target 
> machine boots diskless off.  Then I chroot into that directory and install 
> whatever tools I want using ports/packages.  I find that getting FreeBSD to 
> boot diskless is so easy that I've had it accidentally happen more than once 
> when I wanted something else to happen.  Installing ports in a chroot is also 
> pretty trivial.  Building a custom mfsroot has a bit of a learning curve with 
> a fairly expensive trial and error penalty.

I agree that building a custom mfsroot from scratch would be a bit of a PITA.
I generally cheat by just patching src/release/<arch>/boot_crunch.conf to add
the tools I want to use.  I find dialog(1) useful for popping up
sysinstall-style dialog boxes from shell scripts.  I have also seen folks
build a completely separate MFS root separate from the release process.  While
that was more tedious to get started, it was certainly more flexible.

-- 
John Baldwin