FreeBSD and scripting of graphical environments and dependencies

T

teo

The legend of the manuals and forums of the past, you used to be able to install graphical environments and their dependencies as other software by manually scripting from the FreeBSD graphical installer via sysintall, it seems that they discontinued it, and left all the the installation scripting to manually mode, text.

- bsdinstall, if I'm not mistaken, is only for configuring the base system.
- bsdconfig actually I don't know what function it has, as far as I have seen, it only activates/deactivates software manually.

What is the replacement for sysintall? You used to be able to form scripts manually from the FreeBSD graphical installer and install desktop environments and dependencies along with other software automatically, that method was fun because it installed them automatically and left the system optimized.
 
teo said:
The DarkMate script seems to be discontinued, since March 2023 there is no activity on their github.
Click to expand...
discontinued is a strong word for an one year old script.

There is this one:
forums.freebsd.org

Other - Desktop environments installation script

Hello everyone, I would like to offer, for those who might be interested, an automatic desktop environment installation script (probably yet another one) with bsddialog (GUI). Indeed, I regularly use a script to test hardware and install the desktop environments I need on FreeBSD, so I decided...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org
And also the classic one: sysutils/desktop-installer
 
For scripting an install, I tend to do something like this.

It can be translated to just a simple shell script really. No need for sysinstall or bsdinstall.

A completely manual installation that mirrors the steps that bsdinstall takes is precisely the sort of thing that should go in the handbook.

Edit: If you are not using EFI and prefer to use UFS, then this slightly older guide might be useful to cross compare.
 
Uniform X.org graphics detection and configuration might be a problem, unless you agree with VESA.
What would it be worth, a long script that takes the trial and error approach to reach a functional minimalist desktop with basic wm, fonts and icons?
It could collect a list of different pciconf display entries and add the required procedure to make it work automated.
 
teo said:
Do you use FreeBSD in a desktop environment?
Click to expand...
Yes I do.
My window manager is x11-wm/i3

teo said:
I don't remember if it was in FreeBSD 13 or 14, that desktop-installer script didn't work, it threw an error.
Click to expand...
I've tested it with 13.0-RELEASE at the beginning of my journey on FreeBSD, if I remember correctly it worked at that time.

Throwing an error doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work, sometimes it requires the user to dig into the logs to find what happened exactly.
The Github repository looks alive and no error reported like you suggested, same with FreeBSD Bugzilla.
 
teo said:
The legend of the manuals and forums of the past, you used to be able to install graphical environments and their dependencies as other software by manually scripting from the FreeBSD graphical installer via sysintall, it seems that they discontinued it, and left all the the installation scripting to manually mode, text.
Click to expand...
What's stopping you from using env ASSUME_ALWAYS_YES=yes pkg install -y <somepackage> in the custom install script of bsdinstall(8)?

Code: 
       A typical bsdinstall script, using the default  filesystem  layout  and
       the UFS filesystem, looks like this:

	     PARTITIONS=DEFAULT
	     DISTRIBUTIONS="kernel.txz base.txz"

	     #!/bin/sh
	     sysrc ifconfig_DEFAULT=DHCP
	     sysrc sshd_enable=YES
	     pkg install puppet
 
SirDice said:
What's stopping you from using env ASSUME_ALWAYS_YES=yes pkg install -y <somepackage> in the custom install script of bsdinstall(8)?
Click to expand...
my own ignorance?
so if i make the file /etc/installerconfig (in freebsd-src/etc?)
and then just make the iso with release.sh I can have an iso configured with my settings post install? graphics or otherwise

....gonna try this right now
 
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