> I'm working on a new version of the fully automated installation routine > that I had developed for 4.4. One problem that people have identified > using a PXE based install is that it's possible to get in a loop where > you PXE boot and do the install and then restart and get back to the > PXE boot routine and end up repeatedly installing. > > I'm wondering if a way around that is for the install routine to mount > the target drive and check to see if the install has already been done. > If it has been done then go ahead and boot from that device. So the > question is can the ramdisk kernel cause the machine to boot from > a device without going through the bios? Something like running > boot(8) from a running system...
No, because the wrong kernel (ie. bsd.rd) has already been booted by that point. We don't have any code to jump from a running kernel to an alternate new kernel, and you don't want us to write it and maintain it, the key issue being that our drivers make all sorts of assumptions about system devices being in the BIOS state.
