Creating a custom install disk

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at toybox.placo.com
Tue Mar 4 06:56:00 UTC 2008



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Doug Hardie
> Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 6:16 PM
> To: freebsd-questions
> Subject: Creating a custom install disk
> 
> 
> I have a number of servers that I am going to be updating to FreeBSD 7  
> from 6.2.  I have built a new base system with all the configurations  
> and ports and local code that I need.  This process takes about 2 days  
> from the distribution CDs.  I need a way to clone this machine and  
> install on the others.
> 
> My first idea was a custom install disk.  The make release process  
> does not appear to do what I want.  It would install a GENERIC kernel  
> and take the config files from the distribution.
> 
> LiveCD was tried, but it fails with numerous attempts to write to  
> directories that do not exist.  I expect I could manually create those  
> directories, but I am not sure what it would actually install since it  
> too builds a new GENERIC (but slightly modified) kernel.
> 
> I tried creating a dump file of the new machine and restoring it on  
> the old one.  I did root first and was going to then do /usr, but the  
> alterations to root were such that the system just couldn't keep going  
> through the process.  That what I had expected, but it was worth a try.
> 
> I have not tried this, but perhaps it might work.  Creating the dump  
> files on the new machine, booting the old from the live filesystem cd,  
> recreating the filesystems on disk and then restoring from the dump  
> files on the new system.  That would require a good net connection  
> between the 2 machines.
> 
> Is there a better way to do this?

Yes:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/g4l/

Ted


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