CONTENTS

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The sysinstall utility is generally invoked without arguments for the default behavior, where the main installation/configuration menu is presented.

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 using the "xterm-color" termcap entry).

SCRIPT SYNTAX

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 directive must be by itself on a single line, functions taking their arguments 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 variables will be noted in the following table:

"Function Glossary":

Note: Nothing is actually written to disk by this function, an explicit call to diskPartitionWrite being required for that to happen.

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 partition 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.

DISTRIBUTION MEDIA

SEE ALSO

HISTORY

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