From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Feb 28 18:58:07 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 519AB16A4CE for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:58:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.covadmail.net (mx06.covadmail.net [63.65.120.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D90BD43D1D for ; Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:58:06 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from strick@covad.net) Received: (covad.net 10840 invoked from network); 29 Feb 2004 02:58:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mist.nodomain) (strick@covad.net@67.101.150.139) by sun-qmail08 with SMTP; 29 Feb 2004 02:58:01 -0000 Received: from mist.nodomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mist.nodomain (8.12.9p2/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i1T2w3PG000527; Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:58:04 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan@mist.nodomain) Received: (from dan@localhost) by mist.nodomain (8.12.9p2/8.12.9/Submit) id i1T2w3K2000526; Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:58:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 18:58:03 -0800 (PST) From: Dan Strick Message-Id: <200402290258.i1T2w3K2000526@mist.nodomain> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org cc: des@des.no cc: dan@mist.nodomain cc: peterjeremy@optushome.com.au Subject: Re: Bootonly CDROM utilities X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 02:58:07 -0000 On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 10:52:57AM -0800, Dan Strick wrote: >> > Why not make the live file system CD (i.e. ...disc2.iso, the fixit CD) > bootable? It could serve both purposes. >> and on Sun, 29 Feb 2004 07:10:21 +1100, Peter Jeremy responded: >> > Last time I looked, it was. Have you tried booting disk2? >> I tried the 5.2-RELEASE disc2 shortly after 5.2-RELEASE came out and it would not boot. I just tried it again and it still doesn't boot, at least not on my machine. The BIOS seems to ignore it, as if there was no bootstrap support on it. I verified the MD5 checksum after I first wrote that disk and it does have the live file system on it and the file /cdrom.inf says "CD_VERSION = 5.2-RELEASE". Then I tried the 5.2.1-RELEASE disc2 and the 5.1-RELEASE disc2 and both booted but they were extremely clumsy. If you boot them and go into fixit mode, the fsck command doesn't work because it can't find fsck_4.2bsd. (You have to invoke it with the full command name.) I vaguely recall lots of similar glitches the last time I tried to use a live-filesystem CD in fixit mode. I also just tried booting the 4.9-RELEASE disc2 and while it did boot it was was even more diffcult because it had neither devfs nor a copy of MAKEDEV in /dev. Perhaps you have to go into the sysinstall fdisk/disklabel menus to get the required special files created. I dunno... One other glitch: the memory file system mounted on / was only something like 4 MB and had less than 800 KB free. Perhaps it needs to be bootable on 8 MB machines, but such machines are rare these days. It would be nice if one could have a bigger memory file system on machines with more memory. Just a thought ... Dan Strick strick@covad.net