From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Nov 6 5:35:19 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from megaweapon.zigg.com (megaweapon.zigg.com [206.114.60.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7405B14D6F for ; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 05:35:06 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from matt@zigg.com) Received: from localhost (matt@localhost) by megaweapon.zigg.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA14217; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 08:34:08 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from matt@zigg.com) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 08:34:07 -0500 (EST) From: Matt Behrens To: Juergen Lock Cc: zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: easyboot far into disk In-Reply-To: <199911061143.MAA35365@saturn.kn-bremen.de> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, 6 Nov 1999, Juergen Lock wrote: : In article you write: : >Also, Linux can boot from a floppy. Can FreeBSD does similar things (boot : >from a floppy and then use data on the hard drive)? : Seems so, use a modified kern.flp with your kernel and change its : loader.rc: remove the loading of the mfsroot image and add a line : that sets currdev to point to your root fs (you can use lsdev in : the loader to find it), and you should be ready to go. (I first : tried setting rootdev instead but that seems to be getting ignored : completely at least when booting from a floppy.) I had a system with a 3.7GB drive and a BIOS that refused to boot off it. Boy, it confused the hell out of Windows. :-) In any event, I wanted to put my own kernels on there while tracking -STABLE so I made a minimal disk with /boot stuff and threw a new kernel.gz on there every time I rebuilt the kernel. It was surprisingly easy once I sat down and read the manpages (up until then I'd been sheltered from newfs and disklabel by the "friendlier" tools in sysinstall) :-) : (Maybe this should be added to the FAQ as a method of last resort when : the BIOS boot code can't see above cyl 1024?) I definitely agree. Maybe there should even be a Makefile option while building a kernel to put it on a mounted floppy instead of always putting it in / when install is called. (``make KERNTARGET=/mnt install''?) This I can contribute patches for, if it's generally considered A Good Thing(TM)... :-) Matt Behrens Owner/Administrator, zigg.com Chief Engineer, Nameless IRC Network To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message