Noob FreeBSD 5.1 install question

[Matthew Seaman]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 05:22:07PM -0400, whizkid at valuedj.com wrote:

> A) I have reinstall freeBSD many times over and over.  I work with W2k
> machine at work and do a Unattended install when I don't want to select
> the same options over and over again on multiple machines.  Is there a way
> I can create a install Config file to select all my options for me?  Is
> there a way I can take a snapshot of the way the OS is currently
> configured and make a Install Config File?  Maybe something that will auto
> set my TimeZone, Partition / Slice sizes, just to get the Base OS
> installed without any ports (except for maybe Lynx Text Web Browser)

sysinstall(8) is scriptable -- as described in that man page you can
generate a configuration file which supplies answers to the questions
that sysinstall asks.  As far as I know, there's no way of
automatically generating such a config file.

Note too that the setting you make in sysinstall are usually just the
beginning: most people will use sysinstall in order to get the system
able to boot up from it's own disks, and then carry on configuring the
system by adding ports/packages and so forth just using the standard
system tools.

However, it is possible to auto-install a pretty much completely
configured system: this is a standard action for people that netboot
systems via PXE.  Googling for FreeBSD and PXE will get you plenty of
examples, for instance see
http://seattle.simerson.net/computing/freebsd.netboot.shtml
 
> B) after installing Various ports on the system, do I have to do a Make
> Clean after each install or can I run Make Clean after installing all of
> my required Ports?

No, you can save the 'make clean' step until you're ready.  As running
'make clean' in a port directory will run 'make clean' recursively in
the directories of all of the dependencies, this can be a lot more
time consuming than is really necessary.

Here's a couple of things that can help:

    *) When cleaning for a single port, you can do:

        # make clean NOCLEANDEPENDS=yes

    which will just clean that port directory, and not the dependencies.

    *) If you want to clean out the whole ports tree wholesale, you
    can do it by:

        # cd /usr/ports
        # ls -d */*/work | xargs rm -rf

    or if you install the portupgrade(1) tools,

        # portsclean -C

    will achieve the same effect with less potential for accidentally
    removing more than you intend by having 'rm -rf' run wild...
 
> Just as FYI I am running FreeBSD 5.1, I have downloaded and Burned the 2
> ISO's (Full Install and Repair / Fix It) I run the install from the cd,
> then I choose to NOT install the ports, download the 19.x meg file from
> FreeBSD.org/ports and un Tar it into the /usr folder.

Well, there's no law that says you *have* to use the ports system, but
it's pretty strange not to take advantage of something so good...
There are pre-compiled packages available, but these generally don't
track the latest upstream updates to the ported software very
efficiently.  The ports tree does: updates to popular packages like
apache generally go into the ports tree within a day or so of them
being published.

Rather than installing the ports and system sources by downloading
tarballs from the FTP sites, there are arguments in favour of
installing by running cvsup(1) to populate an empty directory.


-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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