From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Aug 14 17:29:30 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from 3jane.straylight.com (3jane.straylight.com [64.172.254.106]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5AB9C37B409 for ; Tue, 14 Aug 2001 17:29:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jonathan@graehl.org) Received: from SDHQLT0216 (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by 3jane.straylight.com (8.11.5/8.11.4) with SMTP id f7F0TF500537 for ; Tue, 14 Aug 2001 17:29:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jonathan@graehl.org) From: "Jonathan Graehl" To: Subject: installing FreeBSD from hard disk (no floppy, no cdrom, no netboot) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 17:26:56 -0700 Message-ID: <002201c12520$fd3b2ee0$f1ced7c0@SDHQLT0216> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2479.0006 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 Is it possible to use sysinstall on a live FreeBSD machine with an extra disk as the destination? I want to jumpstart a new FreeBSD machine, without having the option of bootable cdrom (old BIOS), floppy (broken controller), or network card (don't have one with that capability). I used to build a DOS boot with Linux install files, and run a DOS loader (loadlin or something like that) ... Obviously, I have a lot of options given that I have the disk in a working FreeBSD-stable box - I'm just not sure what they are (the handbook could use a section on this). I've considered using dump/restore to make more or less a clone of my existing filesystems on the spare drive, editting config files, transferring the drive over, and running the new machine from that. However, I would still need some help with the proper invocation to initialize the MBR/boot sector stuff. Bonus points if someone can tell me how to build the new drive/system using the /usr/src build system. (Yes, I know how to install world to/from NFS, etc. - just need help with the boot-time stuff, and transferring over stuff that installworld nomrally skips ... e.g. /etc, /dev, although I could just copy from my existing trees) CC: replies to me, please. Thanks! -Jonathan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message