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

[David Wolfskill]

For reasons that may well be idiosyncratic, I like to set up FreeBSD
machines to have at least 2 bootable slices -- e.g., one can act as a
fallback if an attempted software upgrade proves to have been ill-timed.

In the past, I've done this manually; while a bit tedious & fairly
"target-rich" with opportunities for human error, it's something that is
typically done infrequently (i.e., once) in the life of a machine (or at
least its boot drive).

At work, the IT folks use a scripted sysinstall(8) to set machines up;
to increase the probability that I'll be able to get 3 "special"
machines set up the way I want, I'm trying to set up a sysinstall config
file to make this as painless as possible.

I managed to get a copy of the config script IT uses, so I had a
starting-point ... but they were setting the machines up with

partition=exclusive

which doesn't seem like a good choice for what I'm doing.  :-}


After my first attempt failed, I poked around on the Net & found
<http://www.nntpnews.net/f2458/what-proper-install-cfg-configuring-multiple-slices-4387807/>,
(dated 18-11-08, 10:40 PM ), in which Peter Steele describes something
similar to what I was about to try next, and writes:

| My intent here is to create three slices-one 6GB in size, another 1GB in
| size, and the third sized to consume the remaining free space. When I
| run this through sysinstall, it complains that it can't find the space
| for the partitions. It even complains that it can't find any free space.
| Because the slices don't get created, the subsequent label assignments
| fail as well. What is the proper commands for creating multiple slices
| in install.cfg?

In a foillowup, he writes:

| After a lot of experimenting, my impression is that sysinstall simply
| doesn't support multiple slice installations. It works to a point, but I
| get some unexpected errors, e.g.
|
| Unable to make device node for /dev/ad0s1a in /dev

which doesn't seem very encouraging.


Would someone please either confirm the limitation or provide a
suitable excerpt from a sysinstall config script to demonstrate
that it is actually possible?  (Or show me where it's spelled out in the
man page....)

(I'm using 7.x sysinstall, if that matters.)

Thanks!

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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