[nycbug-talk] FreeBSD completely headless install?

[Dru]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Jay Savage wrote:

> This may have been discussed before, but I couldn't find anything.

>I need to install FreeBSD 6. The computer I have available is
>currently running as a headless server (OBSD 3.6) and the monitor,
>keyboard, and anything else useful are instorage due to a recent move.
>I don't even have a null modem cable at the moment, which might
>simplify matters.

>My ideal here would be a live cd, or even floppy that booted with some
>generic drivers, grabbed an ip from dhcp, and started sshd from a
>known port with a known password so that I could start sysinstall from
>the command line. It's seems intuitive enough, but I haven't been able
>to find anything like it.

>Does anyone have a suggestion?


If you have a copy of BSD Hacks, #77 is a starter point on scripting 
sysinstall. If you don't:

man sysinstall
more /usr/src/usr/sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg

You'll see that you can pretty well put in whatever is scriptable...

If I had another system available, I would modify the script to my needs 
and test it on a system I could see. Once happy with the results, I would 
then use the script on the headless system.

Have fun,

Dru