Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 14:39:46 -0700 From: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@freebsd.org> To: xavian anderson macpherson <professional3d@home.com> Cc: "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, tagdot57@aol.com, mongor@mail.com Subject: Re: is the loader process of the 5.0-current toolkit different from the 4.0 four-disk set? Message-ID: <20001004143946.D1399@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <39DB97C3.81D20E85@home.com>; from xavian anderson macpherson on Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 01:49:07PM -0700 References: <39DB97C3.81D20E85@home.com>
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On Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 01:49:07PM -0700, xavian anderson macpherson wrote:
> i chose the 5.0-current,
> because according to someone from this list, it is the only version that
> allows me to have the kernel (with vinum support) and all of it's
> components in the /boot directory.
A few things.
1. that is not what I said, I simply said that the /boot layout
is now default in 5.0, not that 5.0 is required to get that.
2. the loader in 4.x and 5.x can load kernels from an arbitrary
location. You can put your kernel in /. In /boot. On a floppy.
On its own partition. On /usr/home/user/mykernel on disk3.
I fail to see the problem here.
3. 5.x is the "in-development" release. it does not appear that
you fit the profile for a -current user, I would strongly
recommend you go back to 4.x.
> as a last resort, can i just copy sysinstall(which may very well run in
> linux) to my harddisk, to format my disks and load freebsd from linux?
> i just tried and succeeded in formatting and mounting /dev/hdd4(linux)
> or /dev/wd3s4(freebsd), using YaST(a suse-linux program) to type
> b7(which is BSDI fs). i have several options (using YaST) which i can
> format my disks as;
A FreeBSD disk slice is identified by 0xa5. FreeBSD further subdivides
the slice into partitions, and then puts filesystems there. This means
that you can have a complete system (/, swap, /usr, /var) inside of one
slice, where a slice is equivalent to a MSDOS partition.
This is fairly clearly explained in the documentation that comes with
your FreeBSD system, leading me to think that you haven't read it.
Let me please belabor the obvious, and point something out:
FreeBSD != Linux.
Let me repeat that.
FreeBSD is not equivalent to Linux.
> lilo (linux loader) for linux does not have this problem (it also
> supports booting any number of os's; and with VMware, you can run them
LILO is a brain-dead loader that simply takes a pre-written file
(called a block map) and reads the blocks from this file. It has
no concept of a filesystem. You are not able to load any file that
you have not previously set up in your lilo.conf.
> concurrently). with lilo i can mount the `/' anywhere i want it
This makes absolutely no sense. LILO has no concept of a filesystem,
hence, it knows nothing about /. Mouting / is done by the kernel.
> that's what i was trying to say. he has essentially quoted (verbatum)
> the very essense of my proposal.
What proposal? FreeBSD does this today. e.g.: once I have the loader
up and running, I can do:
ok load /boot/backup/revision30/kernel
> see the solution in front of him. mount /boot with the kernel on it's
> own slice (in `wd or sd0s1').
Kernels live on a filesystem. FreeBSD filesystems live in partitions.
partitions live on a slice. This is not linux, this is not msdos.
> JONATHAN, I AM SORRY. this is not directed at you personally. i am
> just experiencing de je vu, all over again. i also went through similar
> troubles with linux. however, if you use my (linux) approach, you don't
> need any "special" operations or `actual code' to mount the vinum
> device/partition/slice as `/'.
I'm sorry, but that is patently untrue. Linux conceptually works the
same way as FreeBSD. I can assure you (having looked at the code on
both systems) that some special care is needed. My guess is that you
simply don't understand the concept of what a / filesystem is, I would
suggest reading the documentation that came with your system.
--
Jonathan
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