From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 6 03:03:58 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E605E16A40F for ; Wed, 6 Dec 2006 03:03:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bahamasfranks@gmail.com) Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com (nf-out-0910.google.com [64.233.182.184]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB9D943CA5 for ; Wed, 6 Dec 2006 03:03:15 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from bahamasfranks@gmail.com) Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id x37so404361nfc for ; Tue, 05 Dec 2006 19:03:57 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:sender:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:x-google-sender-auth; b=np3/iaP4cjUyJI5T8DmJJcofz+Ua6f4CLmUxcQr/g5v2NTydXWp6z5Uymf+VzqDlad3EyeyYDrsvDqK4l4FnuvL26uYF9rpJ7sK7xKzAbBNX5EgWifk3cVqmlvFBQ/q7koxpE6mhbiQJ+mliYd2xDKJf//YdzVlxOot+hFRwX+o= Received: by 10.82.98.13 with SMTP id v13mr41491bub.1165374236811; Tue, 05 Dec 2006 19:03:56 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.175.3 with HTTP; Tue, 5 Dec 2006 19:03:56 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <539c60b90612051903q77aa21d0id5c08b2b2c8d10fd@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 20:03:56 -0700 From: "Steve Franks" Sender: bahamasfranks@gmail.com To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Google-Sender-Auth: 07fe379a42358f3b Subject: installing from a harddisk prepared in a functional system 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: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:03:59 -0000 How does one make a 'boot' disk - be it cdrom, harddrive or flash (presuming your bios will boot from all those devices, of course)? 1.The handbook specifies you need to minimally copy the /bin folder to the destination. 2. Obviously you want a valid ufs2 partition. 3. I've repeatedly tried setting the 'bootable' option in fdisk, and the 'A' appears next to the slice, but everytime I reboot it dissappears, even after a 'W' command, so I'm going to try to get this to go without using sysinstall by a manual copy, if I can. 4. Windows partitions need some special files, i.e. ntldr, at a special location on the boot partiton - equivalent in bsd? Or does the loader just look for /bin and load the kernel from there? 5. bootloader seems to work when I put the disk in the new computer - get F1 and F2, but nothing else happens. Basically I'm trying to make an 'image' - put a fresh disk in my working system, format it, make it boot, at least to sysinstall, so I can put it in my other system that has no floppy or cdrom to install from, and get things rolling over the network card. I was thinking I could just do this with a single partition on the target disk, like the install cdrom's do. I want to turn a harddisk into an install cdrom, and then have it install to itself, a dangerous idea, no doubt, but it appears that it could work, I just can't get the new disk to boot in the new system. Thanks, Steve -- Steve Franks, KE7BTE Staff Engineer La Palma Devices, LLC http://www.lapalmadevices.com (520) 312-0089