From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Nov 6 12:49:44 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (castles549.castles.com [208.214.165.113]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2DFA14C9E for ; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 12:49:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dingo.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA07163; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 12:40:48 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <199911062040.MAA07163@dingo.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Juergen Lock Cc: zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: easyboot far into disk In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 06 Nov 1999 12:43:40 +0100." <199911061143.MAA35365@saturn.kn-bremen.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 12:40:47 -0800 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > >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.) Rootdev ought to work, actually. But if you get it wrong, the loader will fall back to using currdev.a > Btw i remember reading in a commitlog that the concept of a `current > device' in loader is about to go, so maybe now this no longer works in > -current... The model I'm currently looking at tries to hide the way the loader thinks about devices as much as possible simply because it's too confusing. In -current the "best" way to tell your loaded kernel where to find its root filesystem is with the vfs.root.mountfrom tunable. > (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?) From what I've been hearing from people lately, in most cases it's 8GB that's the new sound barrier, but yes, a FAQ entry is probably worth writing. Go to it! -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message