The 12 Minute Server Install.

I have been doing all of my testing of the script up to this point on the "mini-server" that has a Intel Atom 1.6Ghz based board in it.

Today in my efforts to validate the script on multiple machines, I ran it on an HP Pavilion (P4 3.0Ghz, 1Gb DDR, 250Gb SATA) and it completed in under 4 minutes.

Start to finish, bare metal to first SMB connection was 12 minutes including the installation of the OS (EVERYTHING was installed via FTP on a 20Mbit internet connection).

Doing a "Minimal Installation of the FreeBSD 7.1 (amd64) on the machine took 8 minutes (first boot to login prompt after install) from FTP.

After first boot, I fetch fetch and launch my script.... 4 minutes later I was at a login prompt after the reboot. Add the first user (umm, 10 seconds), connect from a Mac on the network, start transfering files.

Sick..... turn a machine into a full fledged file server in 12 minutes.

There are links to the log files with start and stop times on my website at: http://www.unixplayground.com/index.html