On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Andres Perera <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 7:41 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 8:29 AM, Theo de Raadt <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>>> I remember some early 5.1 snapshot which installed and successfully run >>>> without /etc/fstab >>>> however, 5.1-RELEASE came with /etc/fstab >>>> >>>> it would be nice to move system from one server to another without having >>>> to bother about /etc/fstab (I moved several of them due to buggy hardware). >>>> is it possible to run without /etc/fstab ? is it supported configuration ? >>> >>> Sorry, but you are wrong. >>> >>> A system must have a /etc/fstab file, and it is created by the installer. >> >> To "move" or replicate a system to other hardware, the /etc/fstab >> aneeds to be reviewed and edited for any partition layout, or it will >> not be able to find the partitions for "/" or other partitions you >> happen to need. Some folks get cute and do NFS or similar targets with >> automounting of varous sorts, so those aren't in fstab on such >> systems. I've never seen anyone using that on OpenBSD. > > afaik, the duid is stored on the disklabel, so if you're making images > of the media there's no need to edit fstab
I wasn't making disk images, which are unsuitable if you're re-arrangig partitions or altering partition sizes (which I was doing). I made compressed tarballs of the mounted filesystems from installation media: *MUCH* more efficient. >> I've done this sort of replicate-and-edit-config-files stunt for >> roughly 20,000 hosts in my careerm, espcially 15,000 Linux hosts in >> one month, so I know the approach can be much faster than installing >> from normal installation media. > > your sites are extremely heterogeneous Amen, brother! My predecessor used disk images, which created all sorts of unnecessary storage and image update problems.
