MarkusBoelter [FreeBSD WIKI]

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===== Markus Boelter =====

Email: <m@FreeBSD.org>

Project: Bundled PXE Installer

Synopsis: The goal is to have a fully functional automatic and bundeled installation system for %%FreeBSD%% using PXE. You will be able to install e.g. cluster nodes with only booting over network and with no further interaction needed. It may be similar to %%RedHat%% Kickstart or Sun %%JumpStart%%. As the scond step I will try to setup the complete PXE Boot Server environment on a %%FreeSBIE%% live CDROM.

Project Details:
Serverside requirements:
- DHCP-Server
- TFTP-Server
- Config-File for installation settings

The Configfile could "feel" like /etc/rc.conf and hold settings for slices and partitions, network settings, language settings, packages to install, pre- and postinstall scripts, ... Maybe it's possible to use this config-file to generate a configuration template for sysinstall. Deeper research is needed to find out if this makes sense. Otherwise I will need a script for parsing this file and execute fdisk and disklabel with correct parameters directly.

Clientside requirements:
- Generate sysconfig-file from the server-config-file
or
- parse config-file and execute all steps like fdisk, disklabel, ... manually

%%FreeSBIE%% integration: Inlcude all serverside scripts, configs and programs to a %%FreeSBIE%% live CDROM, configuration might be stored on a USB Stick or on a network share (nfs, ...)

==== Status: ====

Fri, 23. June 2006:

My mentor Paul Saab and I worked out that the primary goal should be to have an %%NetBoot%% Server that should be as easy as possible to use for end users. The first two weeks I still had exams at university. Nearby I spent a lot of time to look at other PXE Servers in Solaris, several Linux distributions and distributions using BSDInstaller. The first idea was to build a port which will enable a PXE %%NetBoot%% Server. After a closer look we decided against it because if it should be as easy to use as possible, the port has to touch and modify a lot of critical config files on a %%FreeBSD%% system. So ne next goal I have is to fix the %%NetBoot%% Server in BSDInstaller II on %%FreeBSD%% and include it into %%FreeSBIE%% II.

The third week I struggled with compiling BSDInstaller II succesfully on %%FreeBSD%%. Today, on 23rd on June I got everything compiling, the lua based backend and also the ncurses frontend. I am using a lot of the work Andrew Turner did on implementing BSDInstaller into %%FreeBSD%% on the last %%SoC%% 2005.

%%FreeSBIE%% II generates its ISO-image based on a /usr/src-tree and several installed packages and ports. Andrew did already ports for all libs. I will create a port for the frontend and one for the backend. When creating a %%FreeSBIE%% live CD, these ports can be selected to be added to the CD. The only dependencie out of this BSDInstaller stuff will be ISC-DHCP-Server; it will answer PXE Boot requests and point the client to a tftp server. This tftp-server and also nfs-server are included in the %%FreeBSD%% base system, so no additional ports are needed.

Wed, 16. August 2006:

The %%NetBootServer%% is getting more and more polished and is very easy to use with %%FreeSBIE%%. At the moment I am mainly working on an "autoinstaller" for %%FreeBSD%% - that is not specifically bound to %%FreeSBIE%% nor BSDInstaller. It is a rc-script which reads a config file and installs %%FreeBSD%% on a harddisk.

One of the main challanges is to make partitioning/slicing and to install the bootloader easy to use in the config-file.

I am also working on reproducing a BSDInstaller installation on another computer with the config provided by the previous installation.

Things I want to to (also after %%SoC%%):
- port %%DragonflyBSD%% rconfig to %%FreeBSD%%
- better integration from autoinstall and BSDInstaller
- maybe RAID-Volumes in autoinstall
- ... :)

==== Bio: ====
I am a 24 years old student at the University of Cooperative Education in Loerrach, Germany. My course is Information Technology at the engineering department. I am at the 4th semester at the moment and will get my bachelor degree in Sep 2007.

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