FreeBSD remote install

   As you are all aware, many computer systems around the world are
possessed by evil penguins.  It would be nice to exorcize these
evil spirits, but this can be difficult if we don't have physical
access to the machines in question.

   I've put together some code for remotely installing FreeBSD over
existing i386 Linux systems.  In short, I use NetBSD's makefs tool
to build a FreeBSD disk image which boots entirely into memory,
sets up the network, and sets a root password.  Providing that the
beginning of the machine's drive is quiescent (ie, if the first
partition is swap, and you've disabled swapping), you can write
this image to disk with dd, reboot, and ssh into FreeBSD.
   Once you've got a complete FreeBSD filesystem running in memory,
you can slice and partition your drives and install FreeBSD
however you like; this has the added side effect of making vinum
installations much easier.

   For the code and more details, see
http://www.daemonology.net/depenguinator/

Colin Percival