FreeBSD Manual Pages
SYSINSTALL(8) System Manager's Manual SYSINSTALL(8) NAME sysinstall -- system installation and configuration tool SYNOPSIS sysinstall [var=value] [function] [...] DESCRIPTION The sysinstall utility is used for installing and configuring FreeBSD systems. It is the first utility invoked by the FreeBSD installation boot floppy and is also available as /usr/sbin/sysinstall on newly in- stalled FreeBSD systems for use in later configuring the system. The sysinstall utility is generally invoked without arguments for the default behavior, where the main installation/configuration menu is presented. On those occasions where it is deemed necessary to invoke a subsystem of sysinstall directly, however, it is also possible to do so by naming the appropriate function entry points on the command line. Since this action is essentially identical to running an installation script, each command-line argument corresponding to a line of script, the reader is encouraged to read the section on scripting for more information on this feature. NOTES The sysinstall utility is essentially nothing more than a monolithic C program with the ability to write MBRs and disk labels (through the services of the libdisk(3) library) and install distributions or pack- ages onto new and existing FreeBSD systems. It also contains some ex- tra intelligence for running as a replacement for init(8) when it is invoked by the FreeBSD installation boot procedure. It assumes very little in the way of additional utility support and performs most file system operations by calling the relevant syscalls (such as mount(2)) directly. The sysinstall utility currently uses the dialog(3) library to do user interaction with simple ANSI line graphics, color support for which is enabled by either running on a syscons VTY or some other color-capable terminal emulator (newer versions of xterm will support color when us- ing the "xterm-color" termcap entry). This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and will eventu- ally be replaced. RUNNING SCRIPTS The sysinstall utility may be either driven interactively through its various internal menus or run in batch mode, driven by an external script. Such a script may be loaded and executed in one of 3 ways: LOAD_CONFIG_FILE If sysinstall is compiled with LOAD_CONFIG_FILE set in the en- vironment (or in the Makefile) to some value, then that value will be used as the filename to automatically look for and load when sysinstall starts up and with no user interaction re- quired. This option is aimed primarily at large sites who wish to create a single prototype install for multiple machines with largely identical configurations and/or installation options. MAIN MENU If sysinstall is run interactively, that is to say in the de- fault manner, it will bring up a main menu which contains a "load config file" option. Selecting this option will prompt for the name of a script file which it then will attempt to load from a DOS or UFS formatted floppy. COMMAND LINE Each command line argument is treated as a script directive when sysinstall is run in multi-user mode. Execution ends ei- ther by explicit request (e.g. calling the shutdown directive), upon reaching the end of the argument list or on error. For example: /usr/sbin/sysinstall _ftpPath=ftp://ziggy/pub/ mediaSetFTP configPackages Would initialize sysinstall for FTP installation media (using the server `ziggy') and then bring up the package installation editor, exiting when finished. SCRIPT SYNTAX A script is a list of one or more directives, each directive taking the form of: var=value function or #somecomment Where var=value is the assignment of some internal sysinstall variable, e.g. "ftpPass=FuNkYChiKn", and function is the name of an internal sysinstall function, e.g. "mediaSetFTP", and #comment is a single-line comment for documentation purposes (ignored by sysinstall). Each di- rective must be by itself on a single line, functions taking their ar- guments by examining known variable names. This requires that you be sure to assign the relevant variables before calling a function which requires them. The noError variable can be assigned before each directive: this will cause any error detected while processing the directive itself to be ignored. The value of noError will automatically reset to the default "unassigned" every time a directive is processed. When and where a function depends on the settings of one or more vari- ables will be noted in the following table: Function Glossary: configAnonFTP Invoke the Anonymous FTP configuration menu. Variables: None configRouter Select which routing daemon you wish to use, potentially load- ing any required 3rd-party routing daemons as necessary. Variables: router can be set to the name of the desired routing daemon, e.g. "routed" or "gated", otherwise it is prompted for. configNFSServer Configure host as an NFS server. Variables: None configNTP Configure host as a user of the Network Time Protocol. Variables: ntpdate_flags The flags to ntpdate(8), that is to say the name of the server to sync from. configPCNFSD Configure host to support PC NFS. Variables: pcnfsd_pkg The name of the PCNFSD package to load if necessary (defaults to hard coded version). configPackages Bring up the interactive package management menu. Variables: None configUsers Add users and/or groups to the system. Variables: None diskPartitionEditor Invokes the disk partition (MBR) editor. Variables: geometry The disk geometry, as a cyls/heads/sectors formatted string. Default: no change to geometry. partition Set to disk partitioning type or size, its value being free in order to use only remaining free space for FreeBSD, all to use the entire disk for FreeBSD but maintain a proper partition table, existing to use an existing FreeBSD partition (first found), exclusive to use the disk in "dangerously dedicated" mode or, fi- nally, somenumber to allocate somenumber blocks of available free space to a new FreeBSD partition. De- fault: Interactive mode. bootManager is set to one of boot to signify the installation of a boot manager, standard to signify installation of a "standard" non-boot MGR DOS MBR or none to indicate that no change to the boot manager is desired. Default: none. diskInteractive If set, bring up the interactive disk partition editor. Note: Nothing is actually written to disk by this function, an explicit call to diskPartitionWrite being required for that to happen. diskPartitionWrite Causes any pending MBR changes (typically from the diskPartitionEditor function) to be written out. Variables: None diskLabelEditor Invokes the disk label editor. This is a bit trickier from a script since you need to essentially label everything inside each FreeBSD (type 0xA5) partition created by the diskPartitionEditor function, and that requires knowing a few rules about how things are laid out. When creating a script to automatically allocate disk space and partition it up, it is suggested that you first perform the installation interactively at least once and take careful notes as to what the slice names will be, then and only then hardwiring them into the script. For example, let's say you have a SCSI disk on which you have created a new FreeBSD partition in slice 2 (your DOS partition residing in slice 1). The slice name would be da0s2 for the whole FreeBSD partition (da0s1 being your DOS primary parti- tion). Now let's further assume that you have 4GB in this par- tition and you want to sub-partition that space into root, swap, var and usr file systems for FreeBSD. Your invocation of the diskLabelEditor function might involve setting the follow- ing variables: da0s2-1=ufs 2097152 / A 1GB root file system (all sizes are in 512 byte blocks). da0s2-2=swap 1048576 / A 512MB swap partition. da0s2-3=ufs 524288 /var A 256MB /var file system. da0s2-4=ufs 0 /usr 1 With the balance of free space (around 2.25GB) going to the /usr file system and with soft-updates enabled (the argument following the mount point, if non-zero, means to set the soft updates flag). One can also use the diskLabelEditor for mounting or erasing existing partitions as well as creating new ones. Using the previous example again, let's say that we also wanted to mount our DOS partition and make sure that an /etc/fstab entry is created for it in the new installation. Before calling the diskLabelEditor function, we simply add an additional line: da0s1=/dos_c N before the call. This tells the label editor that you want to mount the first slice on /dos_c and not to attempt to newfs it (not that sysinstall would attempt this for a DOS partition in any case, but it could just as easily be an existing UFS parti- tion being named here and the 2nd field is non-optional). You can also set the diskInteractive variable to request that the disk label editor use an interactive dialog to partition the disk instead of using variables to explicitly layout the disk as described above. Note: No file system data is actually written to disk until an explicit call to diskLabelCommit is made. diskLabelCommit Writes out all pending disklabel information and creates and/or mounts any file systems which have requests pending from the diskLabelEditor function. Variables: None distReset Resets all selected distributions to the empty set (no distrib- utions selected). Variables: None distSetCustom Allows the selection of a custom distribution set (e.g. not just one of the existing "canned" sets) with no user interac- tion. Variables: dists List of distributions to load. Possible distribution values are: base The base binary distribution. generic The GENERIC kernel. smp A kernel suitable for multiple processor sys- tems. doc Miscellaneous documentation games Games manpages Manual pages (unformatted) catpages Pre-formatted manual pages proflibs Profiled libraries for developers. dict Dictionary information (for tools like spell). info GNU info files and other extra docs. lib32 (amd64 only) 32-bit runtime compatibility li- braries. ports The ports collection. ssecure /usr/src/secure sbase /usr/src/[top level files] scontrib /usr/src/contrib scrypto /usr/src/crypto sgnu /usr/src/gnu setc /usr/src/etc sgames /usr/src/games sinclude /usr/src/include skrb5 /usr/src/kerberos5 slib /usr/src/lib slibexec /usr/src/libexec srelease /usr/src/release srescue /usr/src/rescue stools /usr/src/tools sbin /usr/src/bin ssbin /usr/src/sbin sshare /usr/src/share ssys /usr/src/sys stools /usr/src/tools subin /usr/src/usr.bin susbin /usr/src/usr.sbin Xbin X.Org client applications. Xlib X.Org libraries. Xman X.Org manual pages. Xdoc X.Org protocol and library documentation. Xprog X.Org imake distribution. Xsrv X.Org X server. Xnest X.Org nested X server. Xprt X.Org print server. Xvfb X.Org virtual frame-buffer X server. Xfmsc X.Org miscellaneous font set. Xf75 X.Org 75DPI font set. Xf100 X.Org 100DPI font set. Xfcyr X.Org Cyrillic font set. Xft1 X.Org Type 1 font set. Xftt X.Org TrueType font set. Xfs X.Org font server. local Local additions collection. distSetDeveloper Selects the standard Developer's distribution set. Variables: None distSetXDeveloper Selects the standard X Developer's distribution set. Variables: None distSetKernDeveloper Selects the standard kernel Developer's distribution set. Variables: None distSetUser Selects the standard user distribution set. Variables: None distSetXUser Selects the standard X user's distribution set. Variables: None distSetMinimum Selects the very minimum distribution set. Variables: None distSetEverything Selects the full whack - all available distributions. Variables: None distSetSrc Interactively select source subcomponents. Variables: None distSetXOrg Interactively select X.Org subcomponents. Variables: None distExtractAll Install all currently selected distributions (requires that me- dia device also be selected). Variables: None docBrowser Install (if necessary) an HTML documentation browser and go to the HTML documentation submenu. Variables: browserPackage The name of the browser package to try and install as necessary. Defaults to latest links package. browserBinary The name of the browser binary itself (if overriding the browserPackage variable). Defaults to links. installCommit Commit any and all pending changes to disk. This function is essentially shorthand for a number of more granular "commit" functions. Variables: None installExpress Start an "express" installation, asking few questions of the user. Variables: None installStandard Start a "standard" installation, the most user-friendly instal- lation type available. Variables: None installUpgrade Start an upgrade installation. Variables: None installFixitHoloShell Start up the "emergency holographic shell" over on VTY4 if run- ning as init. This will also happen automatically as part of the installation process unless noHoloShell is set. Variables: None installFixitCDROM Go into "fixit" mode, assuming a live file system CDROM cur- rently in the drive. Variables: None installFixitFloppy Go into "fixit" mode, assuming an available fixit floppy disk (user will be prompted for it). Variables: None installFilesystems Do just the file system initialization part of an install. Variables: None installVarDefaults Initialize all variables to their defaults, overriding any pre- vious settings. Variables: None loadConfig Sort of like an #include statement, it allows you to load one configuration file from another. Variables: configFile The fully qualified pathname of the file to load. mediaOpen If a media device is set, mount it. Variables: None mediaClose If a media device is open, close it. Variables: None mediaSetCDROM Select a FreeBSD CDROM as the installation media. Variables: None mediaSetFloppy Select a pre-made floppy installation set as the installation media. Variables: None mediaSetDOS Select an existing DOS primary partition as the installation media. The first primary partition found is used (e.g. C:). Variables: None mediaSetTape Select a tape device as the installation media. Variables: None mediaSetFTP Select an FTP site as the installation media. Variables: hostname The name of the host being installed (non-optional). domainname The domain name of the host being installed (optional). defaultrouter The default router for this host (non-optional). netDev Which host interface to use (ed0 or ep0, for example. Non-optional). netInteractive If set, bring up the interactive network setup form even if all relevant configuration variables are al- ready set (optional). ipaddr The IP address for the selected host interface (non-op- tional). netmask The netmask for the selected host interface (non-op- tional). _ftpPath The fully qualified URL of the FTP site containing the FreeBSD distribution you are interested in, e.g. ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/. mediaSetFTPActive Alias for mediaSetFTP using "active" FTP transfer mode. Variables: Same as for mediaSetFTP. mediaSetFTPPassive Alias for mediaSetFTP using "passive" FTP transfer mode. Variables: Same as for mediaSetFTP. mediaSetHTTP Alias for mediaSetFTP using an HTTP proxy. Variables: See mediaSetFTP, plus _httpPath The proxy to use (host:port) (non-optional). mediaSetUFS Select an existing UFS partition (mounted with the label edi- tor) as the installation media. Variables: ufs full /path to directory containing the FreeBSD distrib- ution you are interested in. mediaSetNFS Variables: hostname The name of the host being installed (non-optional). domainname The domain name of the host being installed (optional). defaultrouter The default router for this host (non-optional). netDev Which host interface to use (ed0 or ep0, for example. Non-optional). netInteractive If set, bring up the interactive network setup form even if all relevant configuration variables are al- ready set (optional). ipaddr The IP address for the selected host interface (non-op- tional). netmask The netmask for the selected host interface (non-op- tional). nfs full hostname:/path specification for directory con- taining the FreeBSD distribution you are interested in. mediaSetFTPUserPass Variables: ftpUser The username to log in as on the ftp server site. De- fault: ftp ftpPass The password to use for this username on the ftp server site. Default: user@host mediaSetCPIOVerbosity Variables: cpioVerbose Can be used to set the verbosity of cpio extractions to low, medium or high. mediaGetType Interactively get the user to specify some type of media. Variables: None optionsEditor Invoke the interactive options editor. Variables: None packageAdd Try to fetch and add a package to the system (requires that a media type be set), Variables: package The name of the package to add, e.g. bash-1.14.7 or ncftp-2.4.2. addGroup Invoke the interactive group editor. Variables: None addUser Invoke the interactive user editor. Variables: None shutdown Stop the script, terminate sysinstall and reboot the system. On the sparc64 platform, the system is halted rather than re- booted. Variables: None system Execute an arbitrary command with system(3) Variables: command The name of the command to execute. When running from a boot floppy, very minimal expectations should be made as to what is available until/unless a relatively full system installation has just been done. tcpMenuSelect Configure a network device. Variables: Same as for mediaSetFTP except that _ftpPath is not used. DISTRIBUTION MEDIA The following files can be used to affect the operation of sysinstall when used during initial system installation. cdrom.inf A text file of properties, listed one per line, that describe the contents of the media in use. The syntax for each line is simply "property = value". Currently, only the following properties are recognized. CD_VERSION This property should be set to the FreeBSD version on the current media volume. For example, "CD_VERSION = 5.3". CD_MACHINE_ARCH This property should be set to the ar- chitecture of the contents on this volume. This property is normally only used with FreeBSD products that contain CDs for different architec- tures, to provide better error mes- sages if users try to install Alpha packages on an i386 machine. For ex- ample, "CD_MACHINE_ARCH = alpha". CD_VOLUME In a multi-volume collection (such as the FreeBSD 4-CD set), the ports/INDEX file on each disc should contain the full package index for the set. The last field of the INDEX file denotes which volume the package appears on, and the CD_VOLUME property here de- fines the volume ID of the current disc. packages/INDEX The package index file. Each package is listed on a separate line with additional meta-data such as the re- quired dependencies. This index is generated by "make index" from the ports(7) collection. When multi-volume support is enabled, an additional field should be added to each line indicating which media volume contains the given package. For information about building a full release of FreeBSD, please see release(7). FILES This utility may edit the contents of /etc/rc.conf, /etc/hosts, and /etc/resolv.conf as necessary to reflect changes in the network config- uration. SEE ALSO If you have a reasonably complete source tree online, take a look at /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg for a sample installation script. HISTORY This version of sysinstall first appeared in FreeBSD 2.0. AUTHORS Jordan K. Hubbard <[email protected]> BUGS Editing slice and partition tables on disks which are currently mounted by the system is not allowed. This is generally only a problem when sysinstall is run on a system that is already installed. Use fdisk(8) and bsdlabel(8) for these tasks. This utility is a prototype which lasted several years past its expira- tion date and is greatly in need of death. FreeBSD 7.0 February 18, 2007 SYSINSTALL(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | RUNNING SCRIPTS | SCRIPT SYNTAX | DISTRIBUTION MEDIA | FILES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS | BUGS
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysinstall&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-RELEASE>