Table of Contents

FreeBSD preseed installation (PXE)

Project Description:

I would like to make FAI (Fully Automatic Installer) which is known from other systems like Kickstart from Red Hat or Jumpstart in Solaris.

I want to make modified diskless FreeBSD system.

After boot will run automatic installer using preseed configuration file.

Current status

You can download and boot machine from *.iso file, dd *.usb file to your USB key or you can use option “filename” in your dhcp server and chainload from *.kpxe file.

Files

iPXE downloads and runs memdisk from my website and downloads fai installer.

It works on amd64 architecture (i386 need preparing, do soon).

Next fai looks for bootfile-name option from dhcp server, tries download configuration file and runs scripted bsdinstall.

More information on Howto section.

Bugs and not done

Howto

Howto (need improve)

Schedule

Week 1 (21) May 19, 2014 - May 25, 2014 script to generating installation distro improved
Week 2 (22) May 26, 2014 - June 1, 2014 script to generating installation distro improved
Week 3 (23) June 2, 2014 - June 8, 2014 simple variables (hostname, keymap, time, services, docinstall) improved
Week 4 (24) June 9, 2014 - June 15, 2014 choosing repository and fetching distributions improved
Week 5 (25) June 16, 2014 - June 22, 2014 network configuration improved
Week 6 (26) June 23, 2014 - June 29, 2014 (Mid-term evaluations deadline) users and root password improved
Week 7 (27) June 30, 2014 - July 6, 2014 users and root password improved
Week 8 (28) July 7, 2014 - July 13, 2014 bsdinstall zfsboot improved
Week 9 (29) July 14, 2014 - July 20, 2014 bsdinstall zfsboot improved
Week 10 (30) July 21, 2014 - July 27, 2014 shell script to generate configuration file skipped…
Week 11 (31) July 28, 2014 - August 3, 2014 “bsdinstall tofile” - configuration file geneator based on bsdinstall improved
Week 12 (32) August 4, 2014 - August 10, 2014 “bsdinstall tofile” - configuration file generator based on bsdinstall improved
Week 13 (33) August 11, 2014 - August 17, 2014 test, fixes and documentation done
Week 14 (34) August 18, 2014 - August 24, 2014 test, fixes and documentation not finished…

The Code

svn repository

svnweb

Files

RELEASE iso img
11.0-CURRENT download download
10.0-RELEASE download download
9.3-RELEASE download download

Weekly status report