FreeBSD preseed installation (PXE)
- Student: Kamil Czekirda
- Mentor: Devin Teske
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.
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
- You should to focus on the correct configuration, because fai doesn't check them.
- fai doesn't support wlan interfaces (not planned)
- fai supports only one network interface (todo)
- man page (todo)
Howto
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… |