Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:19:24 -0700 From: perryh@pluto.rain.com To: mueller6727@bellsouth.net Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1 Message-ID: <4c527cfc.OgfAMUi2RUrl9wO8%perryh@pluto.rain.com> In-Reply-To: <4c514671.eAS89s2T1SDVlo2N%mueller6727@bellsouth.net> References: <4c514671.eAS89s2T1SDVlo2N%mueller6727@bellsouth.net>
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"Thomas Mueller" <mueller6727@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot > > floppy set? (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.) ... > I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier > version; I think it was a disk one rather than boot-only ... > If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it three?) > needed to boot the install system. If I've understood the 7.3 set correctly it's now up to five: the initial boot, plus 3 for the kernel and one for the mfsroot image. > I never used zfs, don't have big enough hard drive or enough RAM > to justify zfs. Ditto, at least as to RAM (512MB, which I tend to think of as _huge_ -- after all, "no one should ever need more than 640KB" :) I still have a couple of _hard drives_ that are only 10MB each sitting around somewhere. > You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may > be able to boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting > from CD or USB ... THANK YOU!! It does indeed boot the machine from the 8.1-RELEASE USB memstick, solving the problem entirely. This deserves to be better known. > If I were in your situation, my first choice would be net install, > assuming you have cable or DSL; dialup would be awful slow. Even dialup would be faster (or at least a lot easier) than installing the whole system from floppies. By "boot floppy set" I was referring to just the boot, kernel, and mfsroot needed to get started.
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