Static in the Ether

Daniel Gerzo, has recently published an article as part of the FreeBSD documentation project on how to install FreeBSD on a remote system, when one doesn’t have the luxury of a IP KVM or other remote console. Unfortunately most hosting providers seem to think Linux in its gazillions of flavors (really who would want to run Gentoo?) is the preferable option to windows.

The basic process is about creating a magic memory File System 9MFS) based mini FreeBSD install one can then ddover the base MBR on the system This gets you jsut enough of a Real OS to carry on with the rest of your install.

What this means for me is the possibility of doing some nice rmeote upgrade, or more acuratlye nuke and paves on some remorely hosted equipment. The big cath of course is your remote systems should have sufficient bandwidth (, or at least a local copy of the ISO or CD handy and mounted. Exploring other hosting providers may also now be feasible, now that I can run my favorite server OS without having to try persuade remotes upport to just put a BSD CD in and let me pay for a KVM access window :-)

Tags: FreeBSD, Unix

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 12:39 pm and is filed under FreeBSD, Unix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.