From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 29 20:24:37 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CEEE16A41F for ; Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:24:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tsuraan@gmail.com) Received: from zproxy.gmail.com (zproxy.gmail.com [64.233.162.199]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A78443D62 for ; Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:24:19 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tsuraan@gmail.com) Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id o1so2802070nzf for ; Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:24:16 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=KZg44eYpdF4fIMbChgkHtZlNdXhkFMwjWxeahymb1n6fPG82WBLPlujWZQfPgKuXePZJhZ/wDCty2i19qKCFepRK3DrvR1wD0NdzbIY9JAKJMqZhqtX0+TvXWClmFoFX4I3s4twzOnomuA0YghHYG1YxuvGOLDx85nIOHMDb/+A= Received: by 10.65.75.6 with SMTP id c6mr964631qbl; Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:24:16 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.65.137.15 with HTTP; Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:24:16 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <84fb38e30511291224m78ab355fq@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:24:16 -0600 From: tsuraan To: freebsd-questions In-Reply-To: <20051129194607.GC4935@Grumpy.DynDNS.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <84fb38e30511290839y525e47fdr@mail.gmail.com> <20051129194607.GC4935@Grumpy.DynDNS.org> Subject: Re: Making a Compact Flash-based installer X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:24:37 -0000 >From Dave Kelly: > In prior employment we shipped a bunch of "embedded servers" with > FreeBSD on CF using Soekris hardware. What I suggest you do is rather > than duplicate your *install* CD on CF, simply use another machine to > install the desired image directly on the CF. Probably a good place to > use "dangerously dedicated" rather than a traditional MSDOS partition > table. The problem is that the machines being installed are basically file servers; they boot off of the CF card, but they have a lot of packages installed on their terabyte hard drive arrays, which are also initialized by sysinstall at the moment. I could get away with putting the base system on the CF, but I'd still need some way to initialize the hard drives and install the packages into them. It can be done, but if I could get the CD onto the CF card, that would really be a lot easier. >From Brian McCann: > I've booted off of CF before...and am doing so because the arrays are > >2TB, and the BIOS won't boot from it. I just made a boot floppy, > then DD'd it to the CF card. If your CF card is >640 (or 700) MB, you > could do the same (DD from the CD to CF). This doesn't seem to work; it looks like the computer only recognizes a bootable CD when it's really a CD; if it's a hard drive it seems to expect something else. I haven't quite figured out why though.