FreeBSD 9 unattended installation: how to perform

automated-installfreebsdunattended

That is, like you do with kickstart on Redhat or autoyast in SuSE or jumpstart in Solaris? The OS docs do not seem to answer that simple question.

Best Answer

Unfortunately, the new installer doesn't have much in the way of automation. This will hopefully be fixed in the near future.

The good news is it's not doing anything terribly complicated, so you can write your own "installer" easily. Just netboot (well documented), then write a shell script to do all the partitioning/formatting you want/need and un-tar the distributions onto the disk, do a little setup (users, fstab, network, etc.) and you're good.

I've done this before for the old installer because the automation there wasn't flexible enough for my needs. I can share the script if you like, but it will need updating for the new dist file names.

To some who are used to the other automation systems you mention, this may sound like a huge pain and primitive, but really, it's actually easier, the netboot setup is basically the same work and you get a standard shell scripting environment and can do whatever you want.