From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 25 01:39:27 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6AFB2106566C for ; Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:39:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cjk32@cam.ac.uk) Received: from ppsw-5.csi.cam.ac.uk (ppsw-5.csi.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.135]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 341E68FC08 for ; Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:39:26 +0000 (UTC) X-Cam-AntiVirus: no malware found X-Cam-SpamDetails: not scanned X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ Received: from nat1.cjkey.org.uk ([88.97.163.220]:63629 helo=[192.168.2.59]) by ppsw-5.csi.cam.ac.uk (smtp.hermes.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.155]:465) with esmtpsa (PLAIN:cjk32) (TLSv1:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:256) id 1Nubin-0006j2-IX (Exim 4.70) for questions@freebsd.org (return-path ); Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:18:53 +0000 Message-ID: <4BAAB9FD.5040303@cam.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:18:53 +0000 From: Christopher Key User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (Windows/20100228) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@freebsd.org X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: sysinstall: "You need to assign disk labels before you can proceed with the installation" 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: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:39:27 -0000 Hello, Having run into various problems trying to upgrade from 7.2 to 8.0, I'm instead trying to perform a clean install using sysintall. I've downloaded 8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img, modifed it to use a serial console and flashed it to a USB drive. This boots quite happily, and presents me with the sysintall screen. I'm intending to install to a pair of drives, mirrored with gmirror and partitioned with GPT. I therefore immediately drop into the fixit shell, create the mirror, partition it, and mount the new partitions under /newroot/, /newroot/usr etc. I then exit back to sysinstall, select custom install, point install root to /newroot and choose distribution, media. On selecting commit, sysinstall immediately presents the message "You need to assign disk labels before you can proceed with the installation", and won't proceed. It seems this only happens when sysinstall is running in single user mode. I have manged to make some progress with tricking sysintall into getting past this message. If I run sysinstall within the fixit shell (rather than exiting), I get a new instance of sysinstall with a pid other than 1. Symlinking /usr/bin to /stand, seems to provide most of the binaries it needs, and it proceeeds part of the way through installing the system before getting stuck on the documentation. I avoided this problem when installing 7.2 by creating an mfsbsd image, booting that, and then running sysinstall from there, but I'd rather not have the hassle of doing this for every future release. Moreover, creating an mfsbsd image may not even be an option in the event of a diasaster. Is anyone aware of any way of installing using sysintall from the standard FreeBSD media, but without using sysintall to partition and label the target disks? Kind regards, Christopher Key