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Boss-Freebsd.Html

Installing the Emulab Core Server

Installing FreeBSD on boss

Installing FreeBSD on the boss server is similar to installing FreeBSD on the ops server. Before proceeding, ensure that the machine you will use as your boss server is properly connected to your network and that all of the required software is available either through the network or some other media.

Boot the FreeBSD installation CD on the machine you will use as your boss server. When it asks for the desired installation mode, select Standard. Use the standard bootloader unless you have special requirements.

As with ops, you need to create partitions with the following minimum sizes:

/usr

Needs space for the ports tree and a system object tree, at least 10GB. Be sure to build with plenty of inodes (the ports tree itself uses about 200000, so be safe and build with at least a million).

/usr/testbed

Needs space for testbed software and logs, as well as many disk images. At least 10GB, but much more is better. You may simply make sure this space is available in /usr, and not make this a separate partition.

/var

Holds the database, so at least 1-2 GB.

If you are planning to run your ops server as a virtual machine on boss, and you do not have a separate file server (fs) node, then you also need these partitions:

/users/

Needs space for user home directories. The amount of space required depends on how many users you expect to have. Generally, though, we suggest that users store large files related to their projects in the /proj directory.

/proj/

Needs space for project files. We recommend that this be larger than /users, to encourage people to store files here, which aids per-project accountability.

/groups/

Needs enough space for files shared by the sub-groups of projects. These are primarily used by classes, if any.

/scratch/

Optional, large filesystem of "scratch" space. The intent is that this filesystem provides per-project space that is not "guaranteed" (for the Utah Emulab this means we do not back it up to tape). If used, you would either set no quotas, or higher quotas than for /proj. Most sites probably won't want this.

/share/

Exported read-only to all nodes. We use it for providing experimenters with the source for the FreeBSD and Linux versions we run as well as common packages and RPMs. This could require anything from 1GB to 20GB+ depending on what you want to make available.

When prompted, continue by selecting the 'Developer' distribution set - this will install full sources. When it asks you if you want to install the ports collection, answer no. Do not install any packages at this time. You will get a chance to do so later.

Near the end of the installation, you will be asked if you wish to install or configure several optional items. Apart from setting the hostname, configuring your network devices, enabling SSH logins (if desired), and setting your time zone and root password, you should skip additional configuration.

Do not create any user accounts yet, and just log in as root for the time being. Our software will create user accounts later, once boss is set up. If you already created any users, delete them with the "pw" command and make sure their home directories are removed as well! Be sure to remember your root password, you will need it later!

After exiting the sysinstall tool and rebooting, you should login as root and run freebsd-update to pick up security patches:

freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install