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
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