about unattended installation

[Devin Teske]

On Dec 19, 2012, at 10:06 AM, Egoitz Aurrekoetxea Aurre wrote:

> Good afternoon,
> 
> One little question… I'm trying to have ready our new unattended FreeBSD installation system. Until now, I have been using Sysinstall scripting file but now with 9.1 out I think it's moment to start using BSDInstaller in the unattended installation process.

Hold on a moment. You might want to wait until 9.2. (read more below)



> I have seen the new installer, works basically like an script…. my real question is… before I did in install.cfg something like : 
> 
> ################################
> disk=da0
> partition=all
> bootManager=standard
> diskPartitionEditor
> 
> ################################
> 
> da0s1-1=ufs 3072000 /
> da0s1-2=swap 8096000 none
> da0s1-3=ufs 20485760 /var 1
> da0s1-4=ufs 30720760 /usr 1
> da0s1-5=ufs 0 /expert 1
> diskLabelEditor
> 
> ################################
> 
> Now I assume there's no way of getting this same through any command like… 'bsdinstall partedit _______________________' am I wrong??.

You're correct. In 9.0 and 9.1, it's just not feasible to man-handle the user interface (partedit) as one could sysinstall. (read below about 9.2)



> So I assume all should be done by hand like this example of the Handbook : 
> 
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 bs=1k count=1
> # fdisk -BI da1 #Initialize your new disk
> # bsdlabel -B -w da1s1 auto #Label it.
> # bsdlabel -e da1s1 # Edit the bsdlabel just created and add any partitions.
> # mkdir -p /1
> # newfs /dev/da1s1e # Repeat this for every partition you created.
> # mount /dev/da1s1e /1 # Mount the partition(s)
> # vi /etc/fstab # Add the appropriate entry/entries to your /etc/fstab.
> 
> In the auto script….
> 
> am I wrong?.  If the answer is yes… could you point me to some documentation in order to be able to complete all this doc.

The answer is (unfortunately) yes… that is until (hopefully) 9.2.

It's an on-going significant amount of work to make add backward compatibility (so bsdinstall can load sysinstall "install.cfg" files). I'm not going to discuss the specifics here or yet, but I'm actively working on it.

No docs on how to mangle the auto script to do what you want (that I know of).



> Apart from all this… is Sysinstall going to be maintained in parallel?.
> 

Sysinstall is dead. The bsdinstall you know can be considered the "first generation" and accordingly is a bit spartan. I'm working hard on the next generation. My plan is to have 10.0 with bsdinstall able to run sysinstall scripts (for backward compatibility; can't yet say what 9.x release will be MFC'd to, but that could be 9.2).

I'm planning one helluva BSDCan-2013 presentation.
-- 
Devin

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