# PXE installation



## balanga (Nov 11, 2014)

Does anyone have any pointers regarding installing FreeBSD via PXE?


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## SirDice (Nov 12, 2014)

Something like this? Handbook: 31.8.1. Setting Up the PXE Environment


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## balanga (Nov 12, 2014)

SirDice said:


> Something like this? Handbook: 31.8.1. Setting Up the PXE Environment



That section covers running FreeBSD from a server rather than installing it. Maybe I could simply run `bsdinstall` when the system boots up, but I'd like to know if that would work.

I did find another thread asking the same question and such an installation didn't seem all that straightforward: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/install-over-pxe.22087/.

That thread referred to older versions of FreeBSD. Maybe things have changed.


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## SirDice (Nov 12, 2014)

balanga said:


> That section covers running FreeBSD from a server rather than installing it...


There was an article once covering the installation of a "Jumpstart" server. But the article seems to have disappeared. It was old but the principles should remain largely the same. I haven't tried it myself but you could try copying the entire tree of a memory stick image into the exported directory and set it up in a similar way to the diskless client PXE boot.


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## balanga (Nov 12, 2014)

SirDice said:


> There was an article once covering the installation of a "Jumpstart" server. But the article seems to have disappeared. It was old but the principles should remain largely the same. I haven't tried it myself but you could try copying the entire tree of a memory stick image into the exported directory and set it up in a similar way to the diskless client PXE boot.



Is this the article? http://docs.freebsd.org/doc/5.2.1-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pxe/


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## SirDice (Nov 13, 2014)

Yes, that's the one. I see it's really old, it still uses the floppy images. If I remember correctly they were removed somewhere in version 8.x.


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