Network install over local lan

[Neil Ford]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 07:50:52PM +0100, Duncan Barclay wrote:
> 
> On 05-Jun-00 Neil Ford wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 02:49:46PM +0200, Jonathan Belson wrote:
> > 
> > [snip]
> > 
> >> The way I did it was to remove the harddrive, plug it into
> >> one of my machines with an adapter cable, then install
> >> directly.  I built a suitable kernel on the other machine,
> >> too.
> >> 
> > I wanted to avoid opening up the machine, hence my wish to get
> > a network install working. However, if that turns out to be the
> > best option...
> 
> No, network install is very easy.
> 
> First ensure that you have an ftp daemon running on the FreeBSD box with
> CDROM 1 in it. You will probably need to make a symbolic link from
> the log in directory for ftp to the cdrom. E.g. Allow users to ftp in and
> then ln -s /cdrom ~/4.0-RELEASE.
> 
> Then just follow the instructions in sysinstall. The best way to debug path
> errors with ftp install is to turn debugging on in the options menu, and
> watch the error message on VTY1 (ALT+F2) that will tell you the path
> the install program is trying to use.
> 
I'll give that a go.  I had a few interesting problems this evening which
ended in me using a set of PAO floppies to install 3.4 from CD thanks to
the CD drive that comes bundled with the small Sony Vaio.

But I'd rather have 4.0 installed so I feel a re-install coming on.

> > Thankfully my card (a DLINK one) is on the supported hardware
> > list, I specifically bought one that was as I knew I would be
> > doing this one day (I have the Lib 2 years, it's taken a little
> > longer than anticipated :-)
> > 
> >> BTW, I left 32Megs free at the end of my harddisk for
> >> suspend mode - whether this is actually required or not
> >> I'm not sure.
> 
> You should have at least RAM size + video RAM size on a libretto. I use
> 34MB on my 50CT. It says this in the manual.
>
Ah, that's useful info too.

Thanks,
Neil.