From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 7 09:49:06 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 53CBF1065676 for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2008 09:49:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from 000.fbsd@quip.cz) Received: from elsa.codelab.cz (elsa.codelab.cz [91.103.162.4]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 112C58FC2A for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2008 09:49:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from 000.fbsd@quip.cz) Received: from localhost (localhost.codelab.cz [127.0.0.1]) by elsa.codelab.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4DA1F19E02D; Fri, 7 Mar 2008 10:49:05 +0100 (CET) Received: from [192.168.1.2] (r5bb235.net.upc.cz [86.49.61.235]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by elsa.codelab.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CA6B19E02A; Fri, 7 Mar 2008 10:49:02 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <47D10F9D.4040603@quip.cz> Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:49:17 +0100 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 X-Accept-Language: cz, cs, en, en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Daniel O'Connor References: <200803061742.34291.vincent@netaktiv.com> <200803071059.48837.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> In-Reply-To: <200803071059.48837.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: vincent@netaktiv.com, tech@gitoyen.net, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BTX on USB pen drive X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:49:06 -0000 Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On Fri, 7 Mar 2008, Vincent Mialon wrote: > >>I tested various options in boot0cfg with no sucess. I also tested >>the howto from >>http://typo.submonkey.net/articles/2006/04/13/installing-freebsd-on-u >>sb-stick-episode-2 with a 6.3 FreeBSD release which boots on my pc but >>doesn't boot on my supermicro server. >> >>Do you have any idea or pointer that may help me find the way to boot >>this usb drive ? I may file a bug report if you want. > > > I wanted to make a USB flash drive based installer for FreeBSD but > unfortunately BTX seems to have issues that make it difficult to do > reliably :( I did it in the past. I have 512MB USB flashdisk with 30MB bootable partition from miniboot.iso (FreeBSD 6.2) with GRUB. I used it to install system on Sun Fire X2100 servers without CD-ROM. > Here are 2 patches I tried.. > http://people.freebsd.org/~kib/realbtx > http://people.freebsd.org/~jhb/patches/btx_crx.patch > > They improved things but I still found a number of systems where BTX > would spin dumping register info so fast I couldn't read it (or take a > photo..). > > Unfortunately I have no idea how you'd debug this sort of thing, it's > too much like DOS programming for me :) > > FWIW when it did work it was great :) I used FreeSBIE as my base - it > has stuff to build USB images in CVS (v2). http://www.freesbie.org/ > > I don't know if it's possible to use GRUB or something like that instead > of BTX.. I have no experience with it, but I would be very interested > if it did work (although since GRUB is i386 only and I use amd64 > systems that's another hurdle..) I think you can use GRUB, because it is used in stage where all systems works the same way and amd64 kernel will be booted in later stage. Miroslav Lachman