Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 11:30:09 +0200 (CEST) From: Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl> To: "Randal S. Masutani" <randal@comtest.com> Cc: freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG, Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: IDE Flash Works!, but need some advice. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.00.9808071112310.21538-100000@korin.warman.org.pl> In-Reply-To: <199808062058.KAA05895@oldyeller.comtest.com>
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On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Randal S. Masutani wrote:
>
> I got the IDE Flash to boot PicoBSD!
>
> It took me some time to get the IDE flash formatted with UFS and transfer
> PicoBSD to it. I am not sure what the best way to do it but here is what
> I did:
"Normal" way (i.e. when FreeBSD sees the flash as it should, as an IDE
drive) should be just to:
disklabel -Brw wd0 auto
disklabel -e /dev/rwd0 # to adjust the partitions
newfs -i xxx /dev/wd0s1a
> 1. Created a different version of PicoBSD floppy, changed lang/mfs.rc and
> lang/update references to the floppy drive(/dev/fd0c) to reference the
> IDE flash(/dev/wd0s1) instead.
> 2. Used a FreeBSD 2.2.6 install floppy(boot.flp) and used sysinstall to
> label the IDE Flash, but it didn't newfs it, because it complained about
> unable to complete install or something.(I'm not sure how to do this
> properly)
It can be a purely sysinstall problem.
> 3. booted PicoBSD(normal version) from floppy.
> 4. mounted another floppy with newfs on it and newfs /dev/wd0s1.
> 5. now I was able to mount the IDE Flash.
> 6. mounted the IDE version(step 1 above) PicoBSD boot floppy and just cp
> the kernel and etc files over to the IDE flash.
> 7. then just reboot and let it boot directly out of IDE flash(no floppy).
> 8. now I can save updates of /etc files to IDE flash.
Still, it would be good if you retain the PicoBSD way of keeping the
current config files on MFS, and doing explicit 'update' when you really
need it. That way you minimize the flash wear, because normally even
simple read access would cause implicit write to flash to update the
access time of a file.
> Features of the system:
> PC/104 cpu card with, ALi's 6117 386-40MHz CPU, 8MB RAM, IDE, floppy,
> 2 serial, 1 parallel, ethernet(Crystal CS8900), keyboard, 8MB FFS Flash
> drive(note: this onboard flash drive can only be accessed through BIOS
> calls, I am currently not using this feature.)
I hope that Mike can help us with this one... Mike? What is the current
status on the driver?
Anyway, how much is for such a board (exactly this configuration)? Looks
as a good starting point to build a small router around it :-)
> I need some advice of a better way to format the IDE flash and transfer
> PicoBSD to it?
My guess is that whatever caused sysinstall to fail, was due to
sysinstall's presumptions. I *think* that when you manually use disklabel
and newfs everything should work just ok. So, I imagine that you would
boot the system from a picobsd floppy with disklabel, editor (ee or vi -
for editing the label), newfs and /usr/mdec/boot*, and then after a few
magic incantations you can mount (even NFS-mount if you configure the
on-board ethernet) the source media with the binaries you want to install,
and just copy them on the flash.
Andrzej Bialecki
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