Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:54:34 +1000 From: Jerahmy Pocott <quakenet1@optusnet.com.au> To: Manolis Kiagias <sonicy@otenet.gr> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Booting to Sysinstall Message-ID: <D0699D4B-AAB8-4BAD-B54B-F0FE9A49EA96@optusnet.com.au> In-Reply-To: <46F7DE65.2080003@otenet.gr> References: <74C0DBE7-41EA-42FA-AE01-D82A9FAE3162@optusnet.com.au> <46F7DE65.2080003@otenet.gr>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 25/09/2007, at 1:57 AM, Manolis Kiagias wrote: > Jerahmy Pocott wrote: >> Hello, >> >> Okay so here is the situation: >> Server has dead fd and cd drives, or maybe none at all. You want >> to install FreeBSD >> on it. >> >> The idea I had was to create a small partition, copy the contents >> of a cd into, set it >> to boot off that partition, reboot and it would boot up into >> sysinstall. >> >> Would this be possible? Or is it a dumb idea? >> _______________________________________________ >> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions- >> unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >> >> > The problem with this approach is, you actually need to boot the > FreeBSD kernel to continue with the install. Just by marking a > partition as bootable, will not make it boot, and neither copying > the FreeBSD CD contents will. You have to write a suitable boot > sector that will load the rest of the OS, be it DOS, Windows, > FreeBSD or whatever. And the fact remains, to install FreeBSD you > have to boot into the FreeBSD kernel. Okay, well say I used some tools to create a UFS partition, put the contents of the Boot Only iso on it and put the FreeBSD boot loader program into the MBR (it's boot0?) how could I get it to load the kernel? There seem to be a number of different boot straps, boot, cdboot, pxeboot etc, on this iso image.. I experimented with this on an existing installation and for some reason the slice I created to boot into the basic environment to install from ended up booting the existing installation instead of the version in the slice it was booting from?!
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?D0699D4B-AAB8-4BAD-B54B-F0FE9A49EA96>