shell script is the back end logic necessary for an installer. It
contains both query routines to allow a front-end installer to present
reasonable choices to the user and also action routines which allow
the front end installer to put a FreeBSD distribution onto a disk. It
supports installing onto the usual suspects, as well as advanced
features like Mirroring, ZFS, Encryprion and GPT labels.
While this is only the back-end of the installer, it can do unattended
scripted installations. In PC-BSD's world view, all installations are
scripted and all the front-end does is write the script. As such, it
is useful in its own right.
This has been extensively tested over the past several releases of
PC-BSD. However, differences between that environment and FreeBSD
suggest there will be a period of shake-out while those differences
are discovered and corrected.
A text-based front-end is in the works. For the GUI-based front-end,
you can use the PC-BSD distribution.
Kris' BSDcan paper on pc-sysinstall is linked off his talk on the
BSDcan site:
http://www.bsdcan.org/2010/schedule/events/173.en.html
The man page is written by Josh Paetzel, and I wrote the Makefiles for
the FreeBSD integration. Kris wrote the rest.
This represents version r7010 in the PC-BSD repo.
http://svn.pcbsd.org/pcbsd/current/pc-sysinstall
Submitted by: kris@
Sponsored by: iX Systems
