  Remote Installation of the FreeBSD Operating System without a Remote
                                Console

  Daniel Gerzo

   <danger@FreeBSD.org>

   $FreeBSD:
   release/8.4.0/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/remote-install/article.xml
   39632 2012-10-01 11:56:00Z gabor $

   Copyright (c) 2008 The FreeBSD Documentation Project

   $FreeBSD:
   release/8.4.0/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/remote-install/article.xml
   39632 2012-10-01 11:56:00Z gabor $

   FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.

   Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to
   distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those
   designations appear in this document, and the FreeBSD Project was
   aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed
   by the "(TM)" or the "(R)" symbol.

   This article documents the remote installation of the FreeBSD
   operating system when the console of the remote system is
   unavailable. The main idea behind this article is the result of a
   collaboration with Martin Matuska <mm@FreeBSD.org> with valuable
   input provided by Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

1 Background

   There are many server hosting providers in the world, but very few
   of them are officially supporting FreeBSD. They usually provide
   support for a Linux(R) distribution to be installed on the servers
   they offer.

   In some cases, these companies will install your preferred Linux
   distribution if you request it. Using this option, we will attempt
   to install FreeBSD. In other cases, they may offer a rescue system
   which would be used in an emergency. It's possible to use this for
   our purposes as well.

   This article covers the basic installation and configuration steps
   required to bootstrap a remote installation of FreeBSD with RAID-1
   and ZFS capabilities.

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2 Introduction

   This section will summarize the purpose of this article and better
   explain what is covered herein. The instructions included in this
   article will benefit those using services provided by colocation
   facilities not supporting FreeBSD.

    1. As we have mentioned in the Background section, many of the
       reputable server hosting companies provide some kind of rescue
       system, which is booted from their LAN and accessible over
       SSH. They usually provide this support in order to help their
       customers fix broken operating systems. As this article will
       explain, it is possible to install FreeBSD with the help of
       these rescue systems.

    2. The next section of this article will describe how to
       configure, and build minimalistic FreeBSD on the local
       machine. That version will eventually be running on the remote
       machine from a ramdisk, which will allow us to install a
       complete FreeBSD operating system from an FTP mirror using the
       sysinstall utility.

    3. The rest of this article will describe the installation
       procedure itself, as well as the configuration of the ZFS file
       system.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  2.1 Requirements

   To continue successfully, you must:

     * Have a network accessible operating system with SSH access

     * Understand the FreeBSD installation process

     * Be familiar with the sysinstall(8) utility

     * Have the FreeBSD installation ISO image or CD handy

     --------------------------------------------------------------

3 Preparation - mfsBSD

   Before FreeBSD may be installed on the target system, it is
   necessary to build the minimal FreeBSD operating system image
   which will boot from the hard drive. This way the new system can
   be accessed from the network, and the rest of the installation can
   be done without remote access to the system console.

   The mfsBSD tool-set can be used to build a tiny FreeBSD image. As
   the name of mfsBSD suggests ("mfs" means "memory file system"),
   the resulting image runs entirely from a ramdisk. Thanks to this
   feature, the manipulation of hard drives will not be limited,
   therefore it will be possible to install a complete FreeBSD
   operating system. The home page of mfsBSD, at
   http://people.freebsd.org/~mm/mfsbsd/, includes pointers to the
   latest release of the toolset.

   Please note that the internals of mfsBSD and how it all fits
   together is beyond the scope of this article. The interested
   reader should consult the original documentation of mfsBSD for
   more details.

   Download and extract the latest mfsBSD release and change your
   working directory to the directory where the mfsBSD scripts will
   reside:

 # fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~mm/mfsbsd/mfsbsd-latest.tar.gz
 # tar xvzf mfsbsd-1.0-beta1.tar.gz
 # cd mfsbsd-1.0-beta1/

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  3.1 Configuration of mfsBSD

   Before booting mfsBSD, a few important configuration options have
   to be set. The most important that we have to get right is,
   naturally, the network setup. The most suitable method to
   configure networking options depends on whether we know beforehand
   the type of the network interface we will use, and the network
   interface driver to be loaded for our hardware. We will see how
   mfsBSD can be configured in either case.

   Another important thing to set is the root password. This can be
   done by editing the conf/rootpw.conf file. Please keep in mind
   that the file will contain your password in the plain text, thus
   we do not recommend to use real password here. Nevertheless, this
   is just a temporary one-time password which can be later changed
   in a live system.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    3.1.1 The conf/interfaces.conf method

   When the installed network interface card is unknown, we can use
   the auto-detection features of mfsBSD. The startup scripts of
   mfsBSD can detect the correct driver to use, based on the MAC
   address of the interface, if we set the following options in
   conf/interfaces.conf:

 initconf_interfaces="ext1"
 initconf_mac_ext1="00:00:00:00:00:00"
 initconf_ip_ext1="192.168.0.2"
 initconf_netmask_ext1="255.255.255.0"

   Do not forget to add the defaultrouter information to the
   conf/rc.conf file:

 defaultrouter="192.168.0.1"

     --------------------------------------------------------------

    3.1.2 The conf/rc.conf method

   When the network interface driver is known, it is more convenient
   to use the conf/rc.conf file for networking options. The syntax of
   this file is the same as the one used in the standard rc.conf(5)
   file of FreeBSD.

   For example, if you know that a re(4) network interface is going
   to be available, you can set the following options in
   conf/rc.conf:

 defaultrouter="192.168.0.1"
 ifconfig_re0="inet 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0"

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  3.2 Building an mfsBSD image

   The process of building an mfsBSD image is pretty straightforward.

   The first step is to mount the FreeBSD installation CD, or the
   installation ISO image to /cdrom. For the sake of example, in this
   article we will assume that you have downloaded the FreeBSD
   7.0-RELEASE ISO. Mounting this ISO image to the /cdrom directory
   is easy with the mdconfig(8) utility:

 # mdconfig -a -t vnode -u 10 -f 7.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso
 # mount_cd9660 /dev/md10 /cdrom

   Next, build the bootable mfsBSD image:

 # make BASE=/cdrom/7.0-RELEASE

     Note: The above make command has to be run from the top level of
     the mfsBSD directory tree, i.e. ~/mfsbsd-1.0-beta1/.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  3.3 Booting mfsBSD

   Now that the mfsBSD image is ready, it must be uploaded to the
   remote system running a live rescue system or pre-installed Linux
   distribution. The most suitable tool for this task is scp:

 # scp disk.img root@192.168.0.2:.

   To boot mfsBSD image properly, it must be placed on the first
   (bootable) device of the given machine. This may be accomplished
   using this example providing that sda is the first bootable disk
   device:

 # dd if=/root/disk.img of=/dev/sda bs=1m

   If all went well, the image should now be in the MBR of the first
   device and the machine can be rebooted. Watch for the machine to
   boot up properly with the ping(8) tool. Once it has came back
   on-line, it should be possible to access it over ssh(1) as user
   root with the configured password.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

4 Installation of The FreeBSD Operating System

   The mfsBSD has been successfully booted and it should be possible
   to log in through ssh(1). This section will describe how to create
   and label slices, set up gmirror for RAID-1, and how to use
   sysinstall to install a minimal distribution of the FreeBSD
   operating system.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  4.1 Preparation of Hard Drives

   The first task is to allocate disk space for FreeBSD, i.e.: to
   create slices and partitions. Obviously, the currently running
   system is fully loaded in system memory and therefore there will
   be no problems with manipulating hard drives. To complete this
   task, it is possible to use either sysinstall or fdisk(8) in
   conjunction to bsdlabel(8).

   At the start, mark all system disks as empty. Repeat the following
   command for each hard drive:

 # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 count=2

   Next, create slices and label them with your preferred tool. While
   it is considered easier to use sysinstall, a powerful and also
   probably less buggy method will be to use standard text-based
   UNIX(R) tools, such as fdisk(8) and bsdlabel(8), which will also
   be covered in this section. The former option is well documented
   in the Installing FreeBSD chapter of the FreeBSD Handbook. As it
   was mentioned in the introduction, this article will present how
   to set up a system with RAID-1 and ZFS capabilities. Our set up
   will consist of a small gmirror(8) mirrored / (root), /usr and
   /var file systems, and the rest of the disk space will be
   allocated for a zpool(8) mirrored ZFS file system. Please note,
   that the ZFS file system will be configured after the FreeBSD
   operating system is successfully installed and booted.

   The following example will describe how to create slices and
   labels, initialize gmirror(8) on each partition and how to create
   a UFS2 file system in each mirrored partition:

 # fdisk -BI /dev/ad0 (1)
 # fdisk -BI /dev/ad1
 # bsdlabel -wB /dev/ad0s1 (2)
 # bsdlabel -wB /dev/ad1s1
 # bsdlabel -e /dev/ad0s1 (3)
 # bsdlabel /dev/ad0s1 > /tmp/bsdlabel.txt && bsdlabel -R /dev/ad1s1 /tmp/bsdlabel.txt (4)
 # gmirror label root /dev/ad[01]s1a (5)
 # gmirror label var /dev/ad[01]s1d
 # gmirror label usr /dev/ad[01]s1e
 # gmirror label -F swap /dev/ad[01]s1b (6)
 # newfs /dev/mirror/root (7)
 # newfs /dev/mirror/var
 # newfs /dev/mirror/usr

   (1)
           Create a slice covering the entire disk and initialize the
           boot code contained in sector 0 of the given disk. Repeat
           this command for all hard drives in the system.
   (2)
           Write a standard label for each disk including the
           bootstrap code.
   (3)
           Now, manually edit the label of the given disk. Refer to
           the bsdlabel(8) manual page in order to find out how to
           create partitions. Create partitions a for / (root) file
           system, b for swap, d for /var, e for /usr and finally f
           which will later be used for ZFS.
   (4)
           Import the recently created label for the second hard
           drive, so both hard drives will be labeled in the same
           way.
   (5)
           Initialize gmirror(8) on each partition.
   (6)
           Note the -F option used for swap partition. This instructs
           gmirror(8) to assume that the device is in the consistent
           state after the power/system failure.
   (7)
           Create a UFS2 file system on each mirrored partition.

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  4.2 System Installation

   This is the most important part. This section will describe how to
   actually install the minimal distribution of FreeBSD on the hard
   drives that we have prepared in the previous section. To
   accomplish this goal, all file systems need to be mounted so
   sysinstall may write the contents of FreeBSD to the hard drives:

 # mount /dev/mirror/root /mnt
 # mkdir /mnt/var /mnt/usr
 # mount /dev/mirror/var /mnt/var
 # mount /dev/mirror/usr /mnt/usr

   When you are done, start sysinstall(8). Select the Custom
   installation from the main menu. Select Options and press Enter.
   With the help of arrow keys, move the cursor on the Install Root
   item, press Space and change it to /mnt. Press Enter to submit
   your changes and exit the Options menu by pressing q.

     Warning: Note that this step is very important and if skipped,
     sysinstall will be unable to install FreeBSD.

   Go to the Distributions menu, move the cursor with the arrow keys
   on the Minimal option, and check it by pressing Space. This
   article uses the Minimal distribution in order to save network
   traffic, because the system itself will be installed over ftp.
   Exit this menu by choosing Exit option.

     Note: The Partition and Label menus will be skipped, as these
     are useless now.

   In the Media menu, select FTP. Select the nearest mirror and let
   sysinstall assume that the network is already configured. You will
   be returned back to the Custom menu.

   Finally, perform the system installation by selecting the last
   option, Commit. Exit sysinstall when it finishes the installation.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

  4.3 Post Installation Steps

   The FreeBSD operating system should be installed now; however, the
   process is not finished yet. It is necessary to perform some post
   installation steps in order to allow FreeBSD to boot in the future
   and to be able to log in to the system.

   You must now chroot(8) into the freshly installed system in order
   to finish the installation. Use the following command:

 # chroot /mnt

   To complete our goal, perform these steps:

     * Copy the GENERIC kernel to the /boot/kernel directory:

 # cp -Rp /boot/GENERIC/* /boot/kernel

     * Create the /etc/rc.conf, /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/fstab
       files. Do not forget to properly set the network information
       and to enable sshd in the /etc/rc.conf file. The contents of
       the /etc/fstab file will be similar to the following:

 # Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
 /dev/mirror/swap        none            swap    sw              0       0
 /dev/mirror/root        /               ufs     rw              1       1
 /dev/mirror/usr         /usr            ufs     rw              2       2
 /dev/mirror/var         /var            ufs     rw              2       2
 /dev/cd0                /cdrom          cd9660  ro,noauto       0       0

     * Create the /boot/loader.conf file, with the following
       contents:

 geom_mirror_load="YES"
 zfs_load="YES"

     * Perform the following command, which will make ZFS available
       on the next boot:

 # echo 'zfs_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf

     * Add additional users to the system using the adduser(8) tool.
       Do not forget to add a user to the wheel group so you may
       obtain root access after the reboot.

     * Double-check all your settings.

   The system should now be ready for the next boot. Use the
   reboot(8) command to reboot your system.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

5 ZFS

   If your system survived the reboot, it should now be possible to
   log in. Welcome to the fresh FreeBSD installation, performed
   remotely without the use of a remote console!

   The only remaining step is to configure zpool(8) and create some
   zfs(8) file systems. Creating and administering ZFS is very
   straightforward. First, create a mirrored pool:

 # zpool create tank mirror /dev/ad[01]s1f

   Next, create some file systems:

 # zfs create tank/ports
 # zfs create tank/src
 # zfs set compression=gzip tank/ports
 # zfs set compression=on tank/src
 # zfs set mountpoint=/usr/ports tank/ports
 # zfs set mountpoint=/usr/src tank/src

   That's all. If you are interested in more details about ZFS on
   FreeBSD, please refer to the ZFS section of the FreeBSD Wiki.

     --------------------------------------------------------------
