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To: Michael Dexter <dexter@ambidexter.com>
References: <a06230950bf183ca09eba@[192.168.1.102]>
From: garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen)
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 20:25:52 -0700
In-Reply-To: <a06230950bf183ca09eba@[192.168.1.102]> (Michael Dexter's
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: 5.x separate /boot slice?
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Michael Dexter <dexter@ambidexter.com> writes:

>>>  I would like to try a separate /boot slice as permitted by FreeBSD 5.x...

I forget where you got that from.

Anyway, the boot(8) manpage makes it pretty clear that your /boot must
be on the "a" of whatever "s" you're booting, but I'm not as sure as
others that you can't get the loader to then boot up a kernel from
that /boot but using some other "/" on another "s", probably on its
"a".  I'd be investigating /boot/defaults/loader.conf and its

#currdev="disk1s1a"		# Set the current device
#root_disk_unit="0"		# Force the root disk unit number
#rootdev="disk1s1a"		# Set the root filesystem

and/or how to execute the "built-in" loader(8) commands, like
"unload", "set currdev", etc.  It sounds like that's possible
(something about "exec"ing in scripts), but you might have to learn a
bit of "Forth".

Try booting to the loader command line, and try to get it to use a
kernel+modules from one "s" and a "/" from another.

loader(8)'s "boot_askname" sounds encouraging.