freebsd stable - Jan 2008 - Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE

I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
the process wrote a document on it.  There are scattered docs all over
the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.

http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html

I've CC'd freebsd-stable since I think more system administrators read
that list than freebsd-doc.

I've opened a PR for getting this doc, or pieces of it, added to the
handbook or documentation tree.  Don't have the PR number yet.

I also encountered a reproducable bug with the mfs_root gzip loader (I
believe some people in the past have reported this too?), and will be
opening a separate PR for that.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 11:09:13AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
> the process wrote a document on it.  There are scattered docs all over
> the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
> or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.
> 
> http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
Thanks for putting this together; I've also noticed there's (sometimes
conflicting) documentation on this scattered around various places.

There are a few things in your document that I question though.  For
example, you mention that installing FreeBSD via PXE requires
> iv.  Knowledge of how TFTP and DHCP work, and how to debug them if
>      they break,
> v.   Intricate knowledge of configuring a DHCP server (common
>      question: "what's the 'next-server' and 'option
root-path'
>      stuff? Is it needed? Why?")
I admit that I haven't tried installing Linux or Solaris via PXE, but I
find it interesting that such knowledge wouldn't be required for them.
> vii. ... not being able to do a complete 100% TFTP-based (e.g. no
>      NFS) install
Well, you _can_ do a complete 100% TFTP-based install, but the loader
has to be compiled with an option.  I agree that is rather unfortunate.
> If you tell boot2 to set the speed to 115200 (e.g.
> comconsole_speed="115200"), it won't work ? you'll still
get 9600bps.
Sure, since boot2 doesn't look at loader.conf.  You're right, if you
have a hard disk putting -S115200 in /boot.config is the best bet, and
the loader will pick the speed setting up automatically.
> But when PXE booting, there's only one piece of the bootstrap used:
> pxeboot(8). This means the only solution is to rebuild the boot
> blocks with a serial port speed that has the speed you want -- in this
> case, 115200bps. 
That shouldn't be the case; comconsole_speed="115200" should be
sufficient to set the speed.  (Granted the port will start out at 9600
until the conf file gets parsed.)

How is the console speed handled when PXE booting other operating
systems?

-Ed

In message <20080129190913.GA6104@eos.sc1.parodius.com>,
on Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 at 11:09:13 Jeremy Chadwick (koitsu@FreeBSD.org)
wrote:
> I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
> the process wrote a document on it.  There are scattered docs all over
> the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
> or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.
> 
> http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
This is great.  However, shouldn't 192.168.1.200 be 192.168.1.100 for
newbox.home.lan in the "Common Paths/Terms Used" table?


Cheers,
       Nick.
--

Hi Jeremy,
	I'm very glad that you a) can write! b) that you are actually doing
something with respect to the zillions of missguided how-to's :-)
	Having some experience with the subject, and please, don't read me 
wrong, I see some different approaches:
- indeed this IS the 21'st century, and it's unbelivable that we still
have
  to deal with baudrates! (why can't they be more like modems? autosense:-)
- newer servers don't have serial anymore :-(, the have IPMI/ILO/etc
  some only have com2

what im trying to say, is that hard coding where the console is is a
'problem'
It's my belief that the setting of the console can be done via DHCP - at
the moment I can select the com1/2 - sio.0/sio.1 - via dhcp.

the other item I would like to raise, is the way we do it here.
1st: I boot the new host diskless, this allows us to find out quickly
if all hardware is working, using a tested root/kernel - since DHCP/TFTP/NFS
are working, it takes only a few minutes to bring up a new host
	set it to boot pxe
	add the mac address to the dhcp.conf
	and reboot
2nd: if/and when we decide to make the host 'stand-alone', we do
	sysinstall to partition the disk (or via bsdlabel if you are
        good at maths)
   cd /mnt-root
   rsh -n server dump 0f - /the/root/partition | restore rf -
   change the bios setting to boot off disk (or if you have the console,
   reboot and hit ESC when doing dhcp ...)

ok, so i fibbed a bit :-), there are some small 'configurables'(*)
missing, but
I hope you get the idea.

Cheers,
	danny
PS: *: like setting a diskless setup, which is rather simple and gladly can
       try to explain so that you can the write it out in readable english :-)