Custom Build

Jack Barnett jackbarnett at qwest.net
Fri Sep 2 18:36:47 PDT 2005


Hello all,

How this is the correct list to post this to, if not, please point me to a
more apporiate list.

What I want to do is make a custom automated build for FreeBSD.  Basically,
create a build, burn it to CD-ROM, go stick it into a server and it
automatically configures to the correct hardware, auto sets up the file
system (1 hard drive per server) and then reboots.  When it comes back up, I
have a full functionaly customized FreeBSD install.

The only interaction that should happen during the install, is putting in
the hostname, select static or dynamic ip and then [for non-FreeBSD app]
select to save to local or network drive.  I'm good with perl/bash, etc, so
I know how to create a script to automate the install for our application.

I need to do this on a lot of servers, so doing a manual install would take
weeks.  Each server has 1 hard drive, all the data is stored on a very
robust file server that gets backed up, if the hard drive fails, we just
replace, rebuild and contiune where we left off.  During the install, it
should just partion off 512 for swap, then use rest of disk for root
directory.   Each disk may be a differant size, but they will all be more
then 2 gigs.

The build I want to create would be a "mini-FreeBSD", just the kernal, some
basic programs and 1 non-FreeBSD application.  The only port that would be
open is for SSHD and all servers would sit behind a firewall in there own
seperate subnet (firewall only routes http requests to upload data and
incoming ssh connections).

We're currently using a very old custom Linux build, it's less then 10 megs
total.  The problem we are having with this, is that it doesn't support all
the newer hardware we use (the build is about 4-5 years old) and FreeBSD is
our "standard operating envoriment" (as far as servers goes), the admins
here are more famlair with FreeBSD so it makes sense to switch to  FreeBSD
since we have to update the build anyways (the guy that made the build isn't
here any more and the rest of us are FreeBSD fan-boys :P )   All the other
FreeBSD servers that aren't in the cluster/grid are manually installed.

Could someone point me in the right direction or to some documentation or
other resources?

Regards,
Jack



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