Headless upgrade from Linux to FreeBSD

[Kris Kennaway]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 06:48:38PM +0400, Andrew P. wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've been using FreeBSD for a while - and I prefer it to all other
> server OS'es, but incidentally I have Fedora Core 3 installed on one
> of the servers I manage. I consulted all interested parties and they
> have nothing against migrating it to FreeBSD. I've got physical access
> to the box, but I'd would like it very much to make a headless
> upgrade.
> 
> It's a single-Opteron box with around 130Gb on a 200Gb SATA hard
> drive, the internet bandwidth is about 20Mbit/s. In fact, I've already
> tried to run FreeBSD-5.3 on this very box - without any problem. There
> is no DHCP/DNS on the network it's connected to, so static
> preconfigured IP-address is a must, as well as a pre-configured BIND
> (or at least resolv.conf with one of my external DNS-servers).
> 
> I'm thinking about creating a large hard-drive image (with FreeBSD)
> and somehow writing it on the hard-drive with an in-memory dd-like
> tool. Can anybody suggest a better way? Maybe I could even save some
> data without backing it all up on another server?

That could work - you should test it first on a headful machine with
as close to identical hardware configuration as you can get it.
Another way would be to set up a NFS boot image and boot with PXE.

Both of these approaches probably require some intimacy with FreeBSD,
so if you're not quite at that level then you might cause yourself
less pain by just adding a console (VGA or serial) to the machine
during the installation process.

Kris

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