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Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2011 01:58:43 +1100 (EST)
From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au>
To: Chris Brennan <xaero@xaerolimit.net>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinhHsRHoXrtkntEy-92ELYs=UauJv-83qdQjYDu@mail.gmail.com>
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Cc: Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk>,
	FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>,
	Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop [solved]
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On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 21:41:11 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk> wrote:
 > 
 > > http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/ZFSBootPartition has a good guide for
 > > installing the base manually (you can ignore the gpart and zfs
 > > commands if you want). I found I had to copy the base and kernel
 > > directories from the install ISO to a UFS-formatted USB stick first
 > > though since the LiveFS CD doesn't have the distributions.
 > >
 > > --
 > > Bruce Cran
 > >
 > 
 > Bruce, your a lifesaver! +1 for you and your wiki page. +1 for Warren's page
 > (
 > http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html#_the_old_standard_way_tt_fdisk_8_tt_and_tt_bsdlabel_8_tt)
 > and +5 for Ian and his incredible patience. Hodgepodging Warren's and
 > Bruce's pages together got me a working base. Laptop is now installed w/o
 > the assistance of a boot cd or the usb hard-drive I was using.

That's great news Chris, congratulations for perseverance.  It could be 
argued that it shouldn't be this hard, but I don't need any argument ..

 > I did have to grab a DVD of 8.1 and burn it to a DVDRW, just so I could get
 > access to /dist/8.1-*. That being said, I think I am going to look at
 > setting up that same external hd w/ a full 8.2-R root when it's ready, so I
 > have a full, local tree to utilize for weird installs like this (I don't
 > know why I never did that before)

Excellent idea.

Just for curiousity's sake, after all that what do you wind up with for:

 # fdisk -s ad4
 # bsdlabel ad4s1

?, Ian