Cannot create custom FreeBSD 7.0 install CD for serial console

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Wednesday 01 October 2008 22:25:21 Carl wrote:
> Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 02:41:03AM -0700, Carl wrote:
> >> I've been trying to create a modified FreeBSD 7.0 install CD that will
> >> allow me to do installations entirely via the serial console on a
> >> headless system. Lots of digging on the Internet, reading the handbook,
> >> and I've gotten nowhere fast.
> >
> > Try this:
> >
> > http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
>
> I was already aware of that solution, but it's not for me. There are
> times when I need to do the install and setting up a DHCP server et al
> is not viable. Installing FreeBSD via the network has no benefits for me
> and I will not be trying to install remotely. All I need is to be able
> to do a simple install using the local serial console because a keyboard
> and monitor is not practical in the situation. Can anyone tell me where
> the mistake is in my process?

Look back through the list archives: Martin McCormick and I had a long 
discussion about this about a year ago (I think at least some of it ended up 
on this list).

Here's an extract from one of the messages:

On a system running 6.2-RELEASE, with a 6.2-RELEASE Disc 1 in the CD drive but 
not mounted:

mkdir serialcd

tar xvfC /dev/acd0 serialcd

These two commands created a directory tree in serialcd containing most of the 
contents of the CD. There was a ``tar ignoring out-of-order file'' error, and 
when I mounted the CD and ran

diff -qr  /cdrom serialcd

it reported that RELNOTES.TXT differed - in fact the version in the serialcd 
directory turned out to have zero length. [I suspect you could probably do 
this comparison quicker with mtree, and I never did bother to fix it or find 
out why it was happening]

I edited serialcd/boot/loader.conf to include the line

console="comconsole"

I then ran

mkisofs -J -r -b boot/cdboot -no-emul-boot -o serialcd.iso serialcd

and got an ISO image, serial.iso, which is about 600MB.

The only drawback with this method is that the serial console only cuts in 
just before the boot menu. I suspect that if you wanted to have a serial 
console for every stage of the boot you would need to mess about with the 
ramdisk image on the CD.

HTH
Jonathan