PXE Questions

[admin2 at forkthepenguin.com]

I'm starting to use PXE to install FreeBSD servers, something I've been
doing with Linux for a while. I've got installs working, but I'm running
into a few flexibility issues I hope have been addressed.

While I use DHCP to install the server, the server should not attempt to
boot DHCP when rebooted. I've used the packageAdd mechanism to install and
run a script that customizes the rc.conf file, but upon first reboot the
hostname and DHCP configuration items are inserted into rc.conf below the
items I added with my script.

Q. How can the install be customized to cofigure rc.conf with a static IP
address rather than DHCP? Failing that, how can the "first boot"
configuration be disabled as to not conflict with my custom changes?

I have several different server configurations I need to run, and would
like to setup a per host install.cfg. RedHat's "kickstart" allows these
configurations to be defined on a per IP address basis by modifying a
config file. FreeBSD requires that the mfsroot image be mounted and the
install.cfg file within be modified. This process would need to be done
every time a server is installed rather than having a few vanilla
configurations that could be called independantly (ATA vs SCSI for
example).

Q. Can per host configurations be used? If not, can the install.cfg file
be used to retrieve this data "on the fly" i.e. :

variable=`fetch http://confighost/cgi-bin/config.pl`

where config.pl would be a script that could return values based on
the client IP address?

Is there another way to address this issue?

Chris