From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 22 00:37:56 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 39B4A125 for ; Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:37:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from server1.shellworld.net (shellworld.net [69.60.117.94]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 176883B93 for ; Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:37:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: from server1.shellworld.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by server1.shellworld.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACA4C229A7 for ; Thu, 21 Aug 2014 20:37:49 -0400 (EDT) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Mounting One of the memstick Image Files MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <60841.1408667869.1@server1.shellworld.net> Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 19:37:49 -0500 From: "Martin G. McCormick" Message-Id: <20140822003749.ACA4C229A7@server1.shellworld.net> X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:37:56 -0000 Sometimes, one runs in to an amazing amount of trouble trying to do the simplest things. I need to modify FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img to enable a serial console. It involves adding only one more line to /boot/loader.conf. Dirt simple, right? Well, maybe. I have a Debian system with USB ports and a virtual FreeBSD system hosted by a Mac. The USB ports on the Mac are not passed through to the FreeBSD VM and technical difficulties are likely to prevent me from modifying the VirtualBox VM to set this up. No, you don't want to hear that story. So, if I could mount FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img, read/write, make the change, write back to the image and then copy the image back to the Debian system, I could still accomplish what needs to be done. I am sure the mount process is similar to mounting an ISO image, but what type description goes in the -t flag? In all of this, I also discovered that you can't mount the ufs file system in Debian although it almost happens. The mount appears to work but one gets a spew of I/O errors any time one does anything in what should be the UFS tree. I think I also read that if you recompile the Debian kernel, you can mount ufs read-only which doesn't help anyway. This is definitely in the "For want of a nail, a shoe was lost" department. Many thanks. Martin McCormick