Installing FreeBSD with netboot

FreeBSD bootonly

The first step to installing FreeBSD via netboot is to acquire FreeBSD. We'll be using the bootonly-iso, this can be fetched at your nearest ftp.

Download the bootonly-iso:

fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2/6.2-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso

Mount the iso-image and copy the contents to some location:

mdconfig -a -t vnode -f 6.2-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso
mount_cd9660 /dev/md0 /mnt/cdrom
mkdir /usr/local/pxeboot
cp -r /mnt/cdrom /usr/local/pxeboot
umount /mnt/cdrom

The main reason for copying the cd is to edit the file /boot/loader.conf adding the following line:

echo 'vfs.root.mountfrom="ufs:/dev/md0c"' >> /usr/local/pxeboot/boot/loader.conf

This line will make the pxeboot-loader mount the rootfs from a memorydisk instead of the default of mounting a NFS-filesystem.

NIC with PXE boot

For the pxeboot to work you might have to update your NIC with new firmware. See your manufacturer homepage for more information.

TFTP

Next up is starting a tftp-server from which the firmware can load the network bootstrap program from. This is easiest done by using inetd, remove the leading # from the following line in the file /etc/inetd.conf.

#tftp   dgram   udp     wait    root    /usr/libexec/tftpd      tftpd -l -s /tftpboot

Make the tftpboot directory and copy the boot/pxeboot file to it.

mkdir /tftpboot
cp /usr/local/pxeboot/boot/pxeboot /tftpboot/

Then start inetd by adding it to rc.conf and starting it.

echo 'inetd_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf
/etc/rc.d/inetd start

It can be a good idea to start a tail of messages and xferlog file to see what is happening. In another terminal run:

tail -f /var/log/messages /var/log/xferlog

DHCP

Now it's time for the DHCP-server that the firmware will query to get address and path to the network bootstrap program.