From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jul 21 0: 2:29 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from pike.osd.bsdi.com (pike.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.28.222]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C8DF237B5DB for ; Fri, 21 Jul 2000 00:02:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb@pike.osd.bsdi.com) Received: (from jhb@localhost) by pike.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA42784; Fri, 21 Jul 2000 00:02:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb) From: John Baldwin Message-Id: <200007210702.AAA42784@pike.osd.bsdi.com> Subject: Re: boot disks In-Reply-To: <000701bff2df$7d854ce0$0200a8c0@matrix> from Mike & Tracy Holt at "Jul 20, 2000 11:47:07 pm" To: Mike & Tracy Holt Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 00:02:12 -0700 (PDT) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL68 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...] > Hello, > I've just installed FreeBSD 4 on a computer that's set up as follows: > > hdd 1 - Win98, Win2000, Linux-Mandrake 7.1 > hdd 2 - Win2000 Server (evaluation), FreeBSD 4 > > This is the first time I've tried FreeBSD and I'm a bit confused as to how > to boot the system. I chose not to install a boot manager during setup to > avoid losing my nt bootloader which I've sucessfully setup to boot > everything else. I assumed at some point there would be the option to > create a boot floppy, but I didn't notice that step. Did I miss something? > At this point, I'm not able to boot into FBSD and I'm hoping that I will be > able to create some kind of boot disk without reinstalling. If I can get > into the system, I can run dd to create a boot file for the nt loader, but > until then, I'm stumped. > > Thanks for any advice, Mike Create a installation boot floppy (just the first one: kern.flp) as outlined in the Handbook. Next, boot the system from the floppy. When it prompts for the MFS root floppy, just hit Enter and let it fail. It will then display a 10 second countdown. When it does, hit the space key. You will know be at a command prompt in the loader. Type 'lsdev' to get a list of the disks and partitions on your system. One such partition should be a FreeBSD partition, and it should list each of the FreeBSD partitions as disk2s2a, etc. (or disk3s4a, depends on what disk and slice FreeBSD is installed to, although I think it will be disk2s2a from your description above). You can then type 'set currdev=disk2s2a' to make that partition your current location. Type 'unload' to unload the kernel you loaded from the kernel floppy. Then type 'load /kernel'. It should load the kernel from your hard disk. Finally, type 'boot' to boot the system. HTH -- John Baldwin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message