From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 1 22:24:11 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from fedde.littleton.co.us (cfedde.dsl.frii.net [216.17.139.141]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3528D37B405 for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2001 22:24:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from fedde.littleton.co.us (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fedde.littleton.co.us (8.11.6/8.11.4) with ESMTP id fA26O5N07536; Thu, 1 Nov 2001 23:24:05 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <200111020624.fA26O5N07536@fedde.littleton.co.us> To: "Trevor S. Cornpropst" Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Assistance creating a bootable restore tape In-Reply-To: <20011101234056.D67917@boole.cornpropst.net> From: Chris Fedde Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2001 23:24:05 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 1 Nov 2001 23:40:56 -0500 "Trevor S. Cornpropst" wrote: +------------------ | We have considered an automated install from a custom CDROM | distribution but this is problematic due to different server | configurations and the effort required to maintain multiple | restore CDs. +------------------ I'm not sure that I understand how tape would be different than the CDROM. Do you want to be able to create a bootable recovery system in the field? +------------------ | I used to work on HP-UX systems that had a utility to create bootable | restore tapes but, I no longer have an available system to study. +------------------ I did tape recovery systems on motorola based HPUX 300 series workstations circa 1988 or so. IIRC it was quite painful. I'm not sure that modern PC bioses can even boot from tape. If I was planning a remote appliance configuration today, I'd shy away from tape for anything "operational". I'd consider always booting from CDROM for / and /usr. Then use a scheme of normal and union mounts to allow customizations to be written "over" the underlying image. I'd plan to use tape for archival storage only. -- Chris Fedde To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message