# Headless install VIA SSH



## eminent88 (Oct 6, 2014)

Good Evening,

I'm pretty new to the BSD world, I have been trying to figure out if you can do a headless install via SSH for a share server. We currently have a tower, but no serial port or keyboard in which to use, from Google I was able to find how to do it through a Serial port. I was able to make a custom Arch image to enable SSH on boot, but wasn't to pleased with the performance of the server. If it is possible is it worth the hassle or should we wait 2 or 3 week till a keyboard gets mailed to me. Thank you for your time, and any assistance is appreciated.


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## obsigna (Oct 6, 2014)

eminent88 said:
			
		

> Good Evening,
> 
> I'm pretty new to the BSD world, I have been trying to figure out if you can do a headless install via SSH for a share server. We currently have a tower, but no serial port or keyboard in which to use, from Google I was able to find how to do it through a Serial port. I was able to make a custom Arch image to enable SSH on boot, but wasn't to pleased with the performance of the server. If it is possible is it worth the hassle or should we wait 2 or 3 week till a keyboard gets mailed to me. Thank you for your time, and any assistance is appreciated.



One approach would be to customize the FreeBSD 10 memstick image for allowing ssh-root access, then dd it onto an USB stick, and start your tower with that. If you don't have another FreeBSD machine around, then this is a little bit more involved, because you would need to create a FreeBSD virtual machine on you PC, for example by using Virtual Box. Using this virtual install, you would do the necessary customization of said memstick image and place it to the USB-stick which you then could use to do the installation on your tower.

Some month ago, I wrote down the complete procedure on my BLog. However, this is in German language. If you do not find any other description, then perhaps you could make use of said blog entry by the way of the Google Translator: https://translate.google.com/translate? ... %3Fp%3D409


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## Oko (Oct 6, 2014)

I might be here off line but isn't PXE boot the way to do it. This is the first time I ever heard somebody doing installation using ssh.


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## SirDice (Oct 6, 2014)

eminent88 said:
			
		

> I have been trying to figure out if you can do a headless install via SSH for a share server.


If you think about it for a while you'll understand this isn't as easy as it sounds. Remember that the installation asks for a network configuration, how are you supposed to connect to a machine that doesn't have it's network configured yet?

If there are a few other servers around, you can connect the serial port of the FreeBSD machine to a serial port on a Linux or Windows machine, then use something like minicom on Linux or HyperTerminal on Windows to connect to the serial port.


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## eminent88 (Oct 7, 2014)

It worked like a Charm. Thank you. I really appreciate it. 

I was able to follow it exactly, other then I used Win32DiskImager to make the USB. From there I used VirtualBox to make the changes. 

Then I used the following link to test out the USB on VirtualBox: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-a-usb-flash-drive-in-virtualbox/

From there I just did the normal install. Thank you again for the assistance. Now I don't have to wait 2 to 3 weeks for a keyboard.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Oct 7, 2014)

eminent88 said:
			
		

> I'm pretty new to the BSD world, I have been trying to figure out if you can do a headless install via SSH for a share server. We currently have a tower, but no serial port or keyboard in which to use, from Google I was able to find how to do it through a Serial port. I was able to make a custom Arch image to enable SSH on boot, but wasn't to pleased with the performance of the server. If it is possible is it worth the hassle or should we wait 2 or 3 week till a keyboard gets mailed to me. Thank you for your time, and any assistance is appreciated.


Would it be possible to "borrow" a keyboard from another system long enough to do the install and configure SSH?

The normal method for headless deployment is to use systems that have console redirection, either via a serial port (which you don't have) or a full remote management option like Dell's DRAC, Supermicro's IPMI/remote management option, etc.


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## eminent88 (Oct 8, 2014)

That would be possible, but the tower is just an older desktop with just a basic motherboard. I was able to install by setting up a thumb drive to SSH into it. Everyone here just has laptops and we have two towers with 1 monitor and no keyboards. It worked perfectly for what I needed it to do. Thank you all for your time.


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