This is the HOWTO



  M0n0wall network install

(Roberto Pereyra - unixlibre at unixlibre dot com dot ar)
Last update  05/13/2004


Based in the g4u documentation (http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/) and  Hubert Feyrer <hubert at feyrer dot de>
works.


1. What is it?

g4u ("ghost for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows
easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs
using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. First is to upload the
compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server. Other is to
restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk;
network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed
as a image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using
g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.


2. Requirements & Download

An empty 1.44MB floppy disk or an empty CD
A FTP-server
A DHCP-server
The g4u 1.15 floppy image or the g4u 1.15 ISO CD image
(http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/) . The lastest at this time.
Monowall generic-pc-xxx.img (http://m0n0.ch/wall/downloads.php)


3. Creating the boot g4u disk

3.1 Using the g4u floppy image:

Download the floppy image, g4u-1.15.fs or g4u-1.15.fs.zip
If you downloaded the g4u-1.15.fs.zip file, unpack it to get g4u-1.15.fs
Write the image to disk. Under Unix, a simple "cat g4u-1.15.fs
>/dev/diskette" will do. Make yourself familiar with the name of your
floppy device, some common ones are:
NetBSD: /dev/fd0a
Solaris: /dev/diskette
Linux: /dev/fd0
FreeBSD: /dev/fd0
If you're using DOS, use rawrite.exe. There's also a Windows-based
program available called rawrite32.
3.2 Using the g4u CDROM ISO image:

Download the CDROM ISO image, g4u-1.15.iso or g4u-1.15.iso.zip
If you downloaded the g4u-1.15.iso.zip file, unpack it to get g4u-1.15.iso
Please consult your CDROM writing software (Nero, DiskJuggler, WinOnCD,
cdrecord, ...) 's manual on how to write the g4u.iso file to a CDROM.
Note that the image is bootable.


4: FTP server setup

On a FTP server of your choice, create an user-account called "install",
and protect it with some password. Make sure the 'install' user can
login via ftp (/etc/shells...)
If you want to use a different account, you can specify "login@server"
for slurpdisk


5. M0n0wall image network install

Copy the m0n0wall image in your ftp server install home directory


6. Boot the CD or floppy on the machine you want to install M0n0wall. 

See it read the kernel from disk, then print out all the devices found
in the machine.
It will do DHCP next, asking for an IP number - be sure you have DHCP
configured properly!
At the end you'll get a text description of possible commands, and a
shell prompt.


7. Installing M0n0wall

Type "slurpdisk your.ftp.server.com generic-pc-xxx.img". This will log
into the FTP server's "install" account, verify the password, then
retrieve the image, uncompress it and write it.
Before putting the file on the FTP server, the "install" account's
password is requested.
If you want to use a different account name than "install", use
"account at your dot ftp dot server dot com" for slurpdisk.
Reboot the machine (type "reboot" or press reset button), and see if
your machine comes up as expected - it should!


That's all!


Enjoy



Notes:
See the g4u supported hardware in http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/INSTALL_G4U-1.15
g4u does currently not support a lot of laptop/notebook hardware
(PCMCIA/CardBus, FireWire), sorry.
List of recognized disks
During startup of g4u, all devices recognized are listed, but very fast.
To get a list of recognized disks, use the 'disks' command:
# disks
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0:
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 6149 MB, 13328 cyl, 15 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 12594960 sectors
wd0: 32-bit data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (using DMA data
transfers)


(c) Copyright 2004 Roberto Pereyra <unixlibre at unixlibre dot com dot ar>