From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 13 20:30:11 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED6BC16A4A0 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:30:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from andrea@brancatelli.it) Received: from carota.brancatelli.it (brancatelli.it [84.233.228.130]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 908CA43D99 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:21:54 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from andrea@brancatelli.it) Received: from BRANCATELLIA (localhost.brancatelli.it [127.0.0.1]) by carota.brancatelli.it (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id kADEpm8M084882 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:51:51 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from andrea@brancatelli.it) Message-Id: <200611131451.kADEpm8M084882@carota.brancatelli.it> From: "Andrea Brancatelli" To: Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:51:52 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2962 Thread-Index: AccHM0FT1fK+diuvQlS+ng9jDLRYQg== X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.4/2190/Mon Nov 13 10:31:57 2006 on carota.brancatelli.it X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.7 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_50, HTML_MESSAGE,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.1.4 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.4 (2006-07-25) on carota.brancatelli.it Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Subject: Boot from CD 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, 13 Nov 2006 20:30:12 -0000 Hello everybody. I'm working on a thing I never tried before. I did some googling but I don't think I haven't found any correlated to this. The situation is pretty simple: I'm configuring a FreeBSD (6.1) server to boot from a SAN thru a QLogic 2340 Fiber Channel card. This in general is not a problem as I already have another working machine with this solution. Now for a couple of reason not related to FreeBSD this new machine won't yet _boot_ from the SAN itself but at the same time have all the system installed on the SAN. What I need to do is have a boot device that loads the bootsector, the kernel and then starts everything else from the disk in SAN. I thought about accomplishing this with a BOOT-CD that starts up the kernel and then from the fstab loads the /, /etc, /usr and so on from the SAN. Now my question is this: how do the kernel know where to search the fstab (considered that the fstab says where to find the /etc)? I mean: I suppose I have to put on the CDROM an exact /etc/fstab for that installation.? Or this could be avoided? Also because I may need to edit the fstab for the machine without having to reburn the CD. so what? Or maybe the kernel can actually just be read from the CD and then everything else from the ( SAN | local ) drive? Am I missing something? I'm yet in the make buildworld buildkernel stage so maybe when making the make distribution to create the ISO everything will appear clearer to me but right now something it's not really clear. I hope the scenario is clear. Any suggestion? Any link to any kind of documentation? Thank you very much. Andrea