Re: DFUI installer over ssh?

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

> Has anyone here gotten DFly to install via an ssh connection to a headless
> box?  I thought if I'd ask one of the developers I'd get better chances of
> someone who's had this problem and has solved it.
>
> Jonathon McKitrick
> --
> My other computer is your Windows box.

No, but I have successfully done remote binary migration from one FreeBSD rev to 
a drastically different one with only ssh. And back.

One (of several) ways included creating mutiple partitions, installing what I 
needed where wanted, then editing fstab to mount them differently and rebooting. 
Two totally different sets of '/', '/usr', and such.

Similar trick - booting from a different RAID, used to do remote rebuild of 
ATACONTROl software RAID,  or degrade to / recover from alternative disk running.

One of our colocation providers [1] also offers an 'emergency' boot option, 
wherein the server's BIOS and NIC are *always* set to try a netboot first.

Making a bootable network image actually *available* at the critical point in 
time is controlled by browser-access to another server, on which the boot image 
is stored/altered - then 'published' - or NOT.

An APC remote-controlled power bar socket is another important link in this 
particular chain, so one can reboot even if the last image tried has failed to 
go multi and respond to ssh login.

As you can upload *any* netbootable OS this way, and as it is even easier to do 
with less hardware when the box is at the end of your arm, this is probably the 
best way to go.

HTH,

Bill

(presently in Virginia, who is always at least 8,000 miles away from some of his 
servers in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Zurich).

[1] nine.ch, Zurich. They are not alone.