Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
Hi, could you please send me those installers you have written? I would like to write up mine and I dont have an idea how to do that. Your scripts would really helped me a lot. Be so kind and please send me to like attachment or to miklosovic.free...@gmail.com god bless you :) jpaetzel wrote: On Friday 05 March 2010 07:01:00 John Baldwin wrote: On Thursday 04 March 2010 4:33:29 pm David Wolfskill wrote: For reasons that may well be idiosyncratic, I like to set up FreeBSD machines to have at least 2 bootable slices -- e.g., one can act as a fallback if an attempted software upgrade proves to have been ill-timed. In the past, I've done this manually; while a bit tedious fairly target-rich with opportunities for human error, it's something that is typically done infrequently (i.e., once) in the life of a machine (or at least its boot drive). At work, the IT folks use a scripted sysinstall(8) to set machines up; to increase the probability that I'll be able to get 3 special machines set up the way I want, I'm trying to set up a sysinstall config file to make this as painless as possible. I managed to get a copy of the config script IT uses, so I had a starting-point ... but they were setting the machines up with partition=exclusive which doesn't seem like a good choice for what I'm doing. :-} After my first attempt failed, I poked around on the Net found http://www.nntpnews.net/f2458/what-proper-install-cfg-configuring-multip le- slices-4387807/, (dated 18-11-08, 10:40 PM ), in which Peter Steele describes something similar to what I was about to try next, and writes: | My intent here is to create three slices-one 6GB in size, another 1GB | in size, and the third sized to consume the remaining free space. When | I run this through sysinstall, it complains that it can't find the | space for the partitions. It even complains that it can't find any | free space. Because the slices don't get created, the subsequent label | assignments fail as well. What is the proper commands for creating | multiple slices in install.cfg? In a foillowup, he writes: | After a lot of experimenting, my impression is that sysinstall simply | doesn't support multiple slice installations. It works to a point, but | I get some unexpected errors, e.g. | | Unable to make device node for /dev/ad0s1a in /dev which doesn't seem very encouraging. Would someone please either confirm the limitation or provide a suitable excerpt from a sysinstall config script to demonstrate that it is actually possible? (Or show me where it's spelled out in the man page) (I'm using 7.x sysinstall, if that matters.) If you are doing a fully scripted install you may be better off just using a dedicated shell script to format your disks and mount them and then use the various *-install.sh scripts from the release distributions to install the code. You could still do this via sysinstall by sticking your shell script in /stand in the MFS root and having your sysinstall script just run that script. You might want to build a custom mfsroot to add some more useful tools though. I really think sysinstall needs to support a disk backdoor whereby the user can either manually partition disks and then mount them at /mnt (or have a script do it), and tell sysinstall to just skip the disk stuff and assume /mnt is mounted. David, I second the ditching sysinstall for a shell script idea. A shell script that replaces sysinstall is nearly as short as the install.cfg and a lot easier to figure out. I've written a half dozen auto installers for FreeBSD, from trivial to complex and would be more than willing to help you get something set up. I can send you code if you want as well. -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel FreeBSD -- The power to serve -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Scripting-sysinstall%288%29-to-create---use-multiple-slices-on-a-disk--tp27786883p28784339.html Sent from the freebsd-hackers mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
On Saturday 06 March 2010 8:28:54 am Josh Paetzel wrote: I'd also like to mention John saying you can build a custom mfsroot to use additional tools during install...I go a different tack on this. I'm a huge fan of python, and like to use it for installers. Rather than build a custom mfsroot with python what I prefer to do is build a chroot that the target machine boots diskless off. Then I chroot into that directory and install whatever tools I want using ports/packages. I find that getting FreeBSD to boot diskless is so easy that I've had it accidentally happen more than once when I wanted something else to happen. Installing ports in a chroot is also pretty trivial. Building a custom mfsroot has a bit of a learning curve with a fairly expensive trial and error penalty. I agree that building a custom mfsroot from scratch would be a bit of a PITA. I generally cheat by just patching src/release/arch/boot_crunch.conf to add the tools I want to use. I find dialog(1) useful for popping up sysinstall-style dialog boxes from shell scripts. I have also seen folks build a completely separate MFS root separate from the release process. While that was more tedious to get started, it was certainly more flexible. -- John Baldwin ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Josh Paetzel jpaet...@freebsd.org wrote: On Friday 05 March 2010 07:01:00 John Baldwin wrote: On Thursday 04 March 2010 4:33:29 pm David Wolfskill wrote: For reasons that may well be idiosyncratic, I like to set up FreeBSD machines to have at least 2 bootable slices -- e.g., one can act as a fallback if an attempted software upgrade proves to have been ill-timed. In the past, I've done this manually; while a bit tedious fairly target-rich with opportunities for human error, it's something that is typically done infrequently (i.e., once) in the life of a machine (or at least its boot drive). At work, the IT folks use a scripted sysinstall(8) to set machines up; to increase the probability that I'll be able to get 3 special machines set up the way I want, I'm trying to set up a sysinstall config file to make this as painless as possible. I managed to get a copy of the config script IT uses, so I had a starting-point ... but they were setting the machines up with partition=exclusive which doesn't seem like a good choice for what I'm doing. :-} After my first attempt failed, I poked around on the Net found http://www.nntpnews.net/f2458/what-proper-install-cfg-configuring-multip le- slices-4387807/, (dated 18-11-08, 10:40 PM ), in which Peter Steele describes something similar to what I was about to try next, and writes: | My intent here is to create three slices-one 6GB in size, another 1GB | in size, and the third sized to consume the remaining free space. When | I run this through sysinstall, it complains that it can't find the | space for the partitions. It even complains that it can't find any | free space. Because the slices don't get created, the subsequent label | assignments fail as well. What is the proper commands for creating | multiple slices in install.cfg? In a foillowup, he writes: | After a lot of experimenting, my impression is that sysinstall simply | doesn't support multiple slice installations. It works to a point, but | I get some unexpected errors, e.g. | | Unable to make device node for /dev/ad0s1a in /dev which doesn't seem very encouraging. Would someone please either confirm the limitation or provide a suitable excerpt from a sysinstall config script to demonstrate that it is actually possible? (Or show me where it's spelled out in the man page) (I'm using 7.x sysinstall, if that matters.) If you are doing a fully scripted install you may be better off just using a dedicated shell script to format your disks and mount them and then use the various *-install.sh scripts from the release distributions to install the code. You could still do this via sysinstall by sticking your shell script in /stand in the MFS root and having your sysinstall script just run that script. You might want to build a custom mfsroot to add some more useful tools though. I really think sysinstall needs to support a disk backdoor whereby the user can either manually partition disks and then mount them at /mnt (or have a script do it), and tell sysinstall to just skip the disk stuff and assume /mnt is mounted. David, I second the ditching sysinstall for a shell script idea. A shell script that replaces sysinstall is nearly as short as the install.cfg and a lot easier to figure out. I've written a half dozen auto installers for FreeBSD, from trivial to complex and would be more than willing to help you get something set up. I can send you code if you want as well. (Attempts to avoid shoe flying in his direction from randi@ :/), FWIW, sysinstall(8) is a good starter tool and it has a lot of the information that you need in order to complete an install (especially if you're doing it from scratch), but the amount of effort for using sysinstall(8)'s install.cfg, etc has the greater potential to change in the future when compared with a shell scripted method which is less likely to change; granted gpart vs fdisk is in transition, but the number of steps and the simplicity required to get everything up and going is trivial, and I did so in 100 lines of bourne shell. I'd be happy to share my custom script if desired as well to provide you a general idea of what could be done to solve your problem. Cheers, -Garrett ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
On Saturday 06 March 2010 02:41:30 Garrett Cooper wrote:
(Attempts to avoid shoe flying in his direction from randi@ :/),
FWIW, sysinstall(8) is a good starter tool and it has a lot of the
information that you need in order to complete an install (especially
if you're doing it from scratch), but the amount of effort for using
sysinstall(8)'s install.cfg, etc has the greater potential to change
in the future when compared with a shell scripted method which is less
likely to change; granted gpart vs fdisk is in transition, but the
number of steps and the simplicity required to get everything up and
going is trivial, and I did so in 100 lines of bourne shell.
I'd be happy to share my custom script if desired as well to provide
you a general idea of what could be done to solve your problem.
Cheers,
-Garrett
One of my main issues with using sysinstall comes from an intersection of it's
lack of documentation, and the way it can arbitrarily change over time. For
instance, this week I was working on an install for a number of machines that
had to be imaged with an early 7.x version of FreeBSD, and were specified to
be installed with distSet${OBFUSICATED} In order to determine what
distSet${OBFUSICATED} installs on 7.${EARLY} involves either installing a
system via sysinstall and noting what it installs, or reading the source code.
Where this becomes an issue is sysinstall changes over time,
distSet${OBFUSICATED} is not necessarily the same between 7.${EARLY} and say
8.0. Since there is no documentation you either end up tracking the changes
to sysinstall, or sorting it out at upgrade time.
I'd also like to mention John saying you can build a custom mfsroot to use
additional tools during install...I go a different tack on this. I'm a huge
fan of python, and like to use it for installers. Rather than build a custom
mfsroot with python what I prefer to do is build a chroot that the target
machine boots diskless off. Then I chroot into that directory and install
whatever tools I want using ports/packages. I find that getting FreeBSD to
boot diskless is so easy that I've had it accidentally happen more than once
when I wanted something else to happen. Installing ports in a chroot is also
pretty trivial. Building a custom mfsroot has a bit of a learning curve with
a fairly expensive trial and error penalty.
At any rate. There are a lot of compelling reasons to not use sysinstall for
automated installs. And while there are compelling reasons to use sysinstall
for this task, most of them involve things like I'm a masochist. or It was
there so I thought I'd use it.
--
Thanks,
Josh Paetzel
FreeBSD -- The power to serve
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Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
On Thursday 04 March 2010 4:33:29 pm David Wolfskill wrote: For reasons that may well be idiosyncratic, I like to set up FreeBSD machines to have at least 2 bootable slices -- e.g., one can act as a fallback if an attempted software upgrade proves to have been ill-timed. In the past, I've done this manually; while a bit tedious fairly target-rich with opportunities for human error, it's something that is typically done infrequently (i.e., once) in the life of a machine (or at least its boot drive). At work, the IT folks use a scripted sysinstall(8) to set machines up; to increase the probability that I'll be able to get 3 special machines set up the way I want, I'm trying to set up a sysinstall config file to make this as painless as possible. I managed to get a copy of the config script IT uses, so I had a starting-point ... but they were setting the machines up with partition=exclusive which doesn't seem like a good choice for what I'm doing. :-} After my first attempt failed, I poked around on the Net found http://www.nntpnews.net/f2458/what-proper-install-cfg-configuring-multiple- slices-4387807/, (dated 18-11-08, 10:40 PM ), in which Peter Steele describes something similar to what I was about to try next, and writes: | My intent here is to create three slices-one 6GB in size, another 1GB in | size, and the third sized to consume the remaining free space. When I | run this through sysinstall, it complains that it can't find the space | for the partitions. It even complains that it can't find any free space. | Because the slices don't get created, the subsequent label assignments | fail as well. What is the proper commands for creating multiple slices | in install.cfg? In a foillowup, he writes: | After a lot of experimenting, my impression is that sysinstall simply | doesn't support multiple slice installations. It works to a point, but I | get some unexpected errors, e.g. | | Unable to make device node for /dev/ad0s1a in /dev which doesn't seem very encouraging. Would someone please either confirm the limitation or provide a suitable excerpt from a sysinstall config script to demonstrate that it is actually possible? (Or show me where it's spelled out in the man page) (I'm using 7.x sysinstall, if that matters.) If you are doing a fully scripted install you may be better off just using a dedicated shell script to format your disks and mount them and then use the various *-install.sh scripts from the release distributions to install the code. You could still do this via sysinstall by sticking your shell script in /stand in the MFS root and having your sysinstall script just run that script. You might want to build a custom mfsroot to add some more useful tools though. I really think sysinstall needs to support a disk backdoor whereby the user can either manually partition disks and then mount them at /mnt (or have a script do it), and tell sysinstall to just skip the disk stuff and assume /mnt is mounted. -- John Baldwin ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
On Friday 05 March 2010 07:01:00 John Baldwin wrote: On Thursday 04 March 2010 4:33:29 pm David Wolfskill wrote: For reasons that may well be idiosyncratic, I like to set up FreeBSD machines to have at least 2 bootable slices -- e.g., one can act as a fallback if an attempted software upgrade proves to have been ill-timed. In the past, I've done this manually; while a bit tedious fairly target-rich with opportunities for human error, it's something that is typically done infrequently (i.e., once) in the life of a machine (or at least its boot drive). At work, the IT folks use a scripted sysinstall(8) to set machines up; to increase the probability that I'll be able to get 3 special machines set up the way I want, I'm trying to set up a sysinstall config file to make this as painless as possible. I managed to get a copy of the config script IT uses, so I had a starting-point ... but they were setting the machines up with partition=exclusive which doesn't seem like a good choice for what I'm doing. :-} After my first attempt failed, I poked around on the Net found http://www.nntpnews.net/f2458/what-proper-install-cfg-configuring-multip le- slices-4387807/, (dated 18-11-08, 10:40 PM ), in which Peter Steele describes something similar to what I was about to try next, and writes: | My intent here is to create three slices-one 6GB in size, another 1GB | in size, and the third sized to consume the remaining free space. When | I run this through sysinstall, it complains that it can't find the | space for the partitions. It even complains that it can't find any | free space. Because the slices don't get created, the subsequent label | assignments fail as well. What is the proper commands for creating | multiple slices in install.cfg? In a foillowup, he writes: | After a lot of experimenting, my impression is that sysinstall simply | doesn't support multiple slice installations. It works to a point, but | I get some unexpected errors, e.g. | | Unable to make device node for /dev/ad0s1a in /dev which doesn't seem very encouraging. Would someone please either confirm the limitation or provide a suitable excerpt from a sysinstall config script to demonstrate that it is actually possible? (Or show me where it's spelled out in the man page) (I'm using 7.x sysinstall, if that matters.) If you are doing a fully scripted install you may be better off just using a dedicated shell script to format your disks and mount them and then use the various *-install.sh scripts from the release distributions to install the code. You could still do this via sysinstall by sticking your shell script in /stand in the MFS root and having your sysinstall script just run that script. You might want to build a custom mfsroot to add some more useful tools though. I really think sysinstall needs to support a disk backdoor whereby the user can either manually partition disks and then mount them at /mnt (or have a script do it), and tell sysinstall to just skip the disk stuff and assume /mnt is mounted. David, I second the ditching sysinstall for a shell script idea. A shell script that replaces sysinstall is nearly as short as the install.cfg and a lot easier to figure out. I've written a half dozen auto installers for FreeBSD, from trivial to complex and would be more than willing to help you get something set up. I can send you code if you want as well. -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel FreeBSD -- The power to serve signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Scripting sysinstall(8) to create use multiple slices on a disk?
For reasons that may well be idiosyncratic, I like to set up FreeBSD machines to have at least 2 bootable slices -- e.g., one can act as a fallback if an attempted software upgrade proves to have been ill-timed. In the past, I've done this manually; while a bit tedious fairly target-rich with opportunities for human error, it's something that is typically done infrequently (i.e., once) in the life of a machine (or at least its boot drive). At work, the IT folks use a scripted sysinstall(8) to set machines up; to increase the probability that I'll be able to get 3 special machines set up the way I want, I'm trying to set up a sysinstall config file to make this as painless as possible. I managed to get a copy of the config script IT uses, so I had a starting-point ... but they were setting the machines up with partition=exclusive which doesn't seem like a good choice for what I'm doing. :-} After my first attempt failed, I poked around on the Net found http://www.nntpnews.net/f2458/what-proper-install-cfg-configuring-multiple-slices-4387807/, (dated 18-11-08, 10:40 PM ), in which Peter Steele describes something similar to what I was about to try next, and writes: | My intent here is to create three slices-one 6GB in size, another 1GB in | size, and the third sized to consume the remaining free space. When I | run this through sysinstall, it complains that it can't find the space | for the partitions. It even complains that it can't find any free space. | Because the slices don't get created, the subsequent label assignments | fail as well. What is the proper commands for creating multiple slices | in install.cfg? In a foillowup, he writes: | After a lot of experimenting, my impression is that sysinstall simply | doesn't support multiple slice installations. It works to a point, but I | get some unexpected errors, e.g. | | Unable to make device node for /dev/ad0s1a in /dev which doesn't seem very encouraging. Would someone please either confirm the limitation or provide a suitable excerpt from a sysinstall config script to demonstrate that it is actually possible? (Or show me where it's spelled out in the man page) (I'm using 7.x sysinstall, if that matters.) Thanks! Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill da...@catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. pgpn6D3n7Q5CS.pgp Description: PGP signature
sysinstall(8)
Greetings. Is there an existing initiative, spec, or active project to replace sysinstall(8) with something better? I went looking recently and couldn't find anything. In the event no spec exists I would like to help start, or contribute to one. TIA, -- Dylan Carlson [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
Re: sysinstall(8)
On Mon, Sep 02, 2002 at 06:26:50AM -0400, Dylan Carlson wrote: Greetings. Is there an existing initiative, spec, or active project to replace sysinstall(8) with something better? I went looking recently and couldn't find anything. In the event no spec exists I would like to help start, or contribute to one. I agree that it is not immediately obvious, but at the main FreeBSD web site http://www.FreeBSD.org/ go to the Projects page, scroll to the bottom, and in the Misc section there is the FreeBSD libh Project. It just might be what you want :) G'luck, Peter -- Peter Pentchev [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP key:http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc Key fingerprint FDBA FD79 C26F 3C51 C95E DF9E ED18 B68D 1619 4553 If this sentence didn't exist, somebody would have invented it. msg36672/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
about sysinstall(8) package managment
hi all, I was wondering that, the sysinstall(8) utility doesn't have package managment facilities designed for people to view even if they don't have some kind of connection to the media. Example: When you select the 'packages' option, it will ask you about your media type. If someone doesn't have any of the media, than, they wouldn't be able to know what packages are installed on their system. (Only by doing pkg_info, but not from sysinstall.. :) What I am suggesting is, that we can make a section in the sysinstall configure menu, where we can show all the currently installed packages, and we can link up the current pkg routines such as adding, removing, so that people can easily see what packages are installed, and they can also remove them from that menu.. let me know about your views on this.. thanks, regards, - Hiten - [EMAIL PROTECTED] = SSH Fingerprint: 1024 45:a5:9c:f2:fb:07:da:70:18:02:0b:f3:63:f1:7a:a6 [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-hackers in the body of the message
