On 08/13/13 07:13, Marian Hettwer wrote: ... > This is sad :-/ For any mass deployment I need this... I was okay > with doing it semi automated for the first three boxes at work. But > nowadays it's 10 boxes and we are going for full automation. Hm > hm... > > Marian >
ten boxes. Um. Lets see. An OpenBSD install takes less than ten minutes (assuming small file systems. Yes the newfs step can take a while on big file systems). You can also do several installs at the same time. So you are trying to save at most 100 minutes. dang, I'm gonna spend much of that telling you how to do it. Sounds like you are about to spend a few weeks trying to save a few minutes. Do you think you can write some custom build scripting system in under two hours? Do you think you can LEARN a custom building system in under two hours? This isn't a long, painful, massively interactive Linux or Solaris install, your return on investment of time here is not going to come in 10 boxes. I doubt it would be there for 100 boxes (if you include the setup and infrastructure). Keep in mind, the OpenBSD install process is fairly simple. 1: (assuming appropriate) create fdisk partition. Most common case can be done on the command line. 2: disklabel (can be scripted; see softraid(4) man page. can also use a pre-defined template file, and "predefined" means "before running disklabel"). 3: newfs all partitions 4: mount 'em somewhere, presumably hanging off /mnt 5: untar all desired file sets 6: record a few key config files (network, machine name, etc.) 6a: might as well add your admin users? 7: MAKEDEV all 8: install boot loader (I probably forgot something. that was all from early morning memory) This is all easily scriptable. So, if you can define your task appropriately, you can write an install script, stick it in your own bsd.rd (yes, you will name it something other than bsd.rd) or build a install kernel which fetches the script from a master install server, and away you go. I can't get too excited about this, as your bulk install needs are probably very different than mine, and the marginal time savings per machine are going to be small. Nick.
