ftp installation

[Bill Tillman]

________________________________
From: Daniel Feenberg <feenberg at nber.org>
To: Robert Simmons <rsimmons0 at gmail.com>
Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Sent: Sat, June 11, 2011 8:50:48 PM
Subject: Re: ftp installation



On Sat, 11 Jun 2011, Robert Simmons wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Daniel Feenberg <feenberg at nber.org> wrote:
>>
>> I have tried many of the ftp sites enumerated in sysinstall, with both
>> 7.4-RELEASE and 8.2-RELEASE, and in all cases the installation proceeds
>> for a few seconds and then hangs, with the last message on the console
>> always being:
>>
>>  DEBUG: Generating /etc/fstab file.
>>
...
>>
>> Is there something off about the sysinstall ftp dialog? I don't see a way to
>> monitor what is happening.
>
> Your firewall may be interfering with the connection.  You may want to
> read the handbook section on FTP installs (the grey box at the bottom
> of the page):
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-media.html
>

Well, our router has never interfered with ftp transfers done from the 
command line, but switching to the firewall-friendly mode in sysinstall
does fix the problem.

Thank you
Daniel Feenberg
NBER


If I recall correctly I had to open up my firewall completely to get the ftp 
installations to work. I use a FreeBSD diskless router running IPFW+NATD and the 
log files are set to max out at 5 so I can't see which port is trying to be used 
which gets blocked. So just for the 10 minutes or so to do an FTP install I just 
open the firewall wide and allow any to any. Once the install is complete I 
close the firewall again.