From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 24 15:55:03 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D4F316A417 for ; Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:55:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 07D0E13C45A for ; Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:55:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.1/8.14.1) id l8OFt18G092181; Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:55:01 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:55:00 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Jerahmy Pocott Message-ID: <20070924155459.GM7562@dan.emsphone.com> References: <74C0DBE7-41EA-42FA-AE01-D82A9FAE3162@optusnet.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <74C0DBE7-41EA-42FA-AE01-D82A9FAE3162@optusnet.com.au> X-OS: FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Booting to Sysinstall X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:55:03 -0000 In the last episode (Sep 24), Jerahmy Pocott said: > Okay so here is the situation: Server has dead fd and cd drives, or > maybe none at all. You want to install FreeBSD on it. > > The idea I had was to create a small partition, copy the contents of > a cd into, set it to boot off that partition, reboot and it would > boot up into sysinstall. > > Would this be possible? Or is it a dumb idea? Definitely possible, but if you've taken the time to remove the drive and plug it into another machine with FreeBSD on it, you can save another step and just clone that system onto the new drive and remove any host-specific config, or fetch the raw distribution files and extract them onto the new drive. That way you get a working system immediately when you put the drive back in the old system. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com