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Date:      Sat, 6 Nov 1999 08:34:07 -0500 (EST)
From:      Matt Behrens <matt@zigg.com>
To:        Juergen Lock <nox@jelal.kn-bremen.de>
Cc:        zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: easyboot far into disk
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.9911060829110.14199-100000@megaweapon.zigg.com>
In-Reply-To: <199911061143.MAA35365@saturn.kn-bremen.de>

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On Sat, 6 Nov 1999, Juergen Lock wrote:

: In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.991105105730.28840B-100000@sol.cs.binghamton.edu> 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 <matt@zigg.com>
Owner/Administrator, zigg.com
Chief Engineer, Nameless IRC Network



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