# remote-install using a shell



## paulfrottawa (Sep 14, 2010)

Hello for the last couple of days I've been working on this. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/remote-install/article.html  I have been using a test server at home. But plan to do it to my paid shell account at dbihosting.net

So far I can boot up the test server but always fail to provide the proper password and get the networking support up. 

So how do you properly set the password for remote installs. I know to make this file conf/rootpw.conf but fuzzy about what to input into it. or maybe someone can help guide me though this page. http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/

The test server and paid shell are Centos-5 OS


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## paulfrottawa (Sep 14, 2010)

what might help me out using the iso's from http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/ is a *iso2img program*. So far I'm finding scripts that don't work. Like here http://docs.freebsd.org probaly because its meant to be used to install boot img on a usb device.

______________________________________________--

This worked

to convert an iso to img file. The ISO was named mfsbsd-8.1-i386.iso



```
dd if=/dev/zero of=mfsbsd-8.1-i386.img bs=1k count=26000
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f mfsbsd-8.1-i386.img -u 0
bsdlabel -w -B md0 auto
newfs -m 0 md0a
mkdir /tmp/img
mount /dev/md0a /tmp/img
mkdir /tmp/iso
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f mfsbsd-8.1-i386.iso -u 1
mount_cd9660 /dev/md1 /tmp/iso
cd /tmp/img/
cp -r /tmp/iso/* .
```


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## paulfrottawa (Sep 18, 2010)

I really wonder if this stuff works. I can logon to the machine I upload this stuff too. But installing from their is impossible. I have followed those instructions and learned a whole lot more. The problem for me is when its time to write to disk it says the disk don't exist.


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## danger@ (Sep 18, 2010)

I don't really know what exactly doesnt work. I believe I can help you figure the solution for you (I am the author of that article), but I need to know exactly what you are doing...

To set the root password in the latest version of mfsBSD, you have to edit the conf/loader.conf file and uncomment and set this variable to whatever you want:

```
# Define a new root password
#mfsbsd.rootpw="foobar"
```

If you have some other problems, please be more specific and more descriptive about what you are doing.


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## paulfrottawa (Sep 21, 2010)

Thanks danger
Well I have a second server account with centos. Not that I hate it but if I can turn it into a freebsd install that would be great. 

So far I set up a test server at home to do it. But I cannot install freebsd on it after login using the formula above (mfsbsd-8.1-i386.iso). Most of the time I end up wiping out everything and just left with a prompt and need to start over installing centos again. 

The problem looks like it writes to the md devices and get disk is full errors all the time even using sysinstall or other methods.

I only have one disk at the moment and I'm not sure what I'm looking at when I try this on the actual server. I thing your documentation requires two disk correct?


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## danger@ (Sep 21, 2010)

Hi,

the article you have found describes in detail how to proceed. Basically you ssh into linux box and dd the image onto the boot disk, reboot the machine and then it should boot the mfsBSD system (stripped-down FreeBSD). From there you install the system as described at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/remote-install/installation.html.

This procedure doesn't require two disk system, you can do this with just one disk - you just skip the gmirror setup completely. You will probably go with /dev/ad0 or da0, or ad4, etc...


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## paulfrottawa (Sep 21, 2010)

Well I'm still having problems doing this.

Here's a couple of snap shots showing two problems.


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## estover (Oct 6, 2010)

Did you ever find a fix for this? I am having the same issue, do you think it is virtualbox specific issue?


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## paulfrottawa (Oct 22, 2010)

estover said:
			
		

> Did you ever find a fix for this? I am having the same issue, do you think it is virtualbox specific issue?



No but I'm going to try it again using a different mfsBSD. Its probally because centos is different from what it was test on. Anyways I post back on my results.


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## estover (Oct 23, 2010)

Yup for some odd reason mfsbsd doesn't work on vbox. It won't do the partitioning correctly. I was able to do the install using the the hardware that I generated the vbox image from.


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