Hello,
back in times (sysinstall(8) aera), when geom(4) was extended for GPT
(and gpart(8) got the ability to write GPT labels) I created my own,
highly customized installer, which has the drawback that it still
requires a special distribution media (iso with cpio archives). My plans
to support the official ISO never materialized, but it's still providing
a sophisticated (auto-partitioning) ZFS and UFS setup job likewise for
UEFI and BIOS based system (emerged from a embedded project) and
provides a radical update concept: newfs (UFS factory snapshot with
auto-backup+restore, resp. new ZFS datasets). It is focused on
productive servers, with as much read-only mounts as possible (and
omitting dev bytes on those strictly productive machines) and was a
sysinstall(8) substitution.
Since the ammount of machines to deploy massively decreased for me, and
pkgbase seems to be more or less ready ('make packages' left a beautiful
repo), I want to replace my customized installation methods (transfering
all it's features for optional usage).
I'm planning to use whatever FreeBSD uses by default. Currently, it's
bsdinstall(8) I guess (which I never used), but I'm not sure if it is
planned that bsdinstall(8) will be made pkgbase compatible.
Is anyone already working on a pkgbase-based installer (different than
bsdinstall(8))?
Maybe I can implement my additional options/features in a way useful for
FreeBSD too. I'm personally focusing on local repo - media backed for
the beginning. Would be a honor to help making some progress in that
area (2nd half of this year will allow me to spend some more time on
that). Skills: not many besides sh(1), but a lot of experience in
real-world needs and ready to improve C finally :-) And quiet familiar
with build(7) and make(1) of course.
Does anybody know anyone who could want help for pkgbase installer and
would want to ramp me up?
Best,
-harry
- What setup method is planned for pkgbase? Harry Schmalzbauer
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