Hi Nick,
well, obviously you have a different opinion on automated installations.
For me it's even crucial with just 10 boxes.
I'm taking into account that I want to introduce more OpenBSD
installations at work and that I also need to install QA environments.
All of our infrastructure (2000+ servers) are fully automated installable.
The lack of doing the same with OpenBSD is one reason to not introduce
more OpenBSD installations.
Long story short, your opinion on this topic differs to mine.
Between OpenBSD 4.7 and 5.1 I had my own set of install scripts but I
never came around to actually modify bsd.rd, or rather build my own one
which starts the installation automatically.
Looks like it's time to do this. And maybe I can sync up with some
others in this thread and we could work together.
Cheers,
Marian
PS.: For the interested reader, I always liked FAI for debian. My first
scripted OpenBSD install was based on that.
Am 13.08.13 13:52, schrieb Nick Holland:
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.
