Network Or CD Install?

[Root]

Well ive never really botherd using CD to install , ive always done network installs. I find network installs extremely fast (if you have a fast connection) and pretty simple. CD should be pretty fast but i can almost guarantee that network install is much simpler and can be faster, which do you prefer? And why?

[cristobal]

I have done some network installs as well and its fairly easy and rules out the need to ahve a CDROM installed.
But still, sometimes, I feel more at home when I have the CD.

[jmack]

When I install FreeBSD, I usually have a boot cd, which will install a very basic OS - just enough to boot the system on it's own afterwords.

When that is complete, I install CVSup and download the latest sources, recompile my kernel, rebuild the system, and voila - a very up to date BSD install.

This generally takes about 4-5 hours from start to finish. I don't do full CD installs since I have never had the CD's, and usually CD versions are not up to date, so you need to update once that is done anyway.

One thing I have done is downloaded the sources on to an NFS server, then tell the install to get the files from the NFS share - which is really quick on a local network - conserves bandwidth too!

I haven't gotten as far as running my own CVSup server to do that part though, that's the next step.