Is there a way to install DragonFly via network (w/o CD) ?

[Scott Ullrich]

Excellent.  I've already drafted some other options to deal with 
starting a DHCPD server, etc.    It's located at 
http://www.bsdinstaller.org/pfi_dhcpd_plan.txt .   These items would be 
able to reside on a CF card, floppy, CD, etc and could automatically 
start the DHCPD server, etc from PFI.

In addition to your installer menu items, we can go ahead and prompt for 
the relevant information instead of using default parameters?   IE: You 
could invoke one option that would ask a series of question like "Do you 
wish to obtain an IP address from the network", etc.   "Do you wish to 
start a DHCP Server on this network?", etc.

-Scott

Matthew Dillon wrote:

:The issues with network configuration and such for DHCPD could easily be 
:handled by pfi (pre-flight installer).  Docs for this area available at: 
: 
:http://www.bsdinstaller.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/installer/root_skels/installer/etc/defaults/pfi.conf?rev=1.3&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup
:
:At any rate, if nobody else is working on this, this would be an ideal 
:addition to the installer and should be very easy to accomplish.   If 
:nobody else minds, I can tackle this pretty quickly with PFI.
:
:Regards,
:
:Scott

    Sure, go for it!  But lets define what we want first.  Presumably we
    want to add some options to the installer's base menu and/or add logins
    for this stuff, in addition to being able to automate it with a CD or
    CD+USB diskkey combo.  Right?
    Hmm.  Is it possible to have one DHCP server distribute just IP addresses
    (e.g. like your home cablemodem/dsl router), and another DHCP server
    distribute only DHCP/BOOTP boot-related requests?  Maybe I should 
    experiment a bit.

    so, e.g. pfi variables would be something like

	# Enable tftp and NFS services with pxeboot and a kernel available via
	# tftp and the CD's root mount available via NFS.
	#
	pfi_boot_tftp_server="YES"
	pfi_boot_nfs_server="YES"
	# Enable DHCP related pxeboot services:  root-path and filename specs
	#
	pfi_boot_pxeserver="YES"
	# Enable DHCP related dynamic IP address services.  This server will
	# assign IP addresses to requesting clients in the 10.1.0.0-10.1.255.255
	# range.
	#
	pfi_boot_ipserver="YES"
	[I'm not sure if pxe and ip services can be separately enabled since
	 they are both served from the same dhcp server, but it might be 
	 possible]

    And the new installer menu options would be something like this:

	* Start TFTPD, NFSD, and PXE BOOT services without IP serving.  This
	  machine will obtain its IP address automatically via DHCP.
	* Start TFTPD, NFSD, and PXE BOOT services with IP serving.  This
	  machine will be assigned the IP address 10.1.0.1
						-Matt