Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 09:02:01 +0100 From: Francois Tigeot <ftigeot@wolfpond.org> To: JT <jtfbsd@jt.net.au> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: USB Key Disk Boot Message-ID: <20041031080201.GA82423@aoi.wolfpond.org> In-Reply-To: <008f01c4bf0f$89a58fc0$070a0a0a@JTUFFIN> References: <008f01c4bf0f$89a58fc0$070a0a0a@JTUFFIN>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 02:04:41PM +0800, JT wrote: > > Has anyone already developed or had experience with getting FreeBSD to run off a USB key disk? > > I am looking to run a minimal FreeBSD build on a USB key disk as a network monitoring system, but I am having great difficulty getting information on how to do so. FreeBSD is my preferred *nix OS, but if I am not able to get a USB boot solution in a reasonable time, I will have to move my project to a Linux based solution as there are already Linux USB boot systems out there. > > All assistance is appreciated. I think that even if I could get some info on the BSD bootup sequence/etc I might be able to build something workable. I have no experience with USB booting but if your bios is not too exotic, it should be doable. I have created a minimal system you can boot from regular disks, tftp and flash based devices. I suspect it should also be able to boot from USB keys. The trick is to use FreeBSD's boot loader to load a ramdisk image with the kernel. The kernel itself has no knowledge of the boot device, all it knows is / is md0 and there is no need to mount filesystems. This page should give some insights on how to create your own ramdisk: http://www.thinbsd.org/doc.html -- Francois Tigeot
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20041031080201.GA82423>