Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 04:07:42 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: "Kenta Suzumoto" <kentas@hush.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Reinstall without reformat Message-ID: <20131014040742.d03fa5bd.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20131013172430.71AA26018E@smtp.hushmail.com> References: <20131013172430.71AA26018E@smtp.hushmail.com>
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On Sun, 13 Oct 2013 13:24:30 -0400, Kenta Suzumoto wrote: > Hi all. Is it possible to install FreeBSD without formatting the disk? Yes. The installer supports not formatting existing partitions. The file system characteristica will be kept, possible content will overwritten. Note that "superfluous content" will also be kept, except of course you previously remove everything. > I have one directory of data that I want to keep. You should still make a backup, because "I want to keep" does imply exactly that in regards of an OS installation. :-) > I can boot from the > installer and rm every directory except that (/bin /boot etc), but how > could I install the OS from there? You simply re-enter the installer, assign the (existing, but now empty) partitions to the desired mountpoint, make sure _not_ to newfs them, and then commit to the installation as usual. An alternative would be, after "preparing" the partitions, mount them as desired and extract the installation datasets from the installation media manually (via shell commands). Still you might miss other steps the installer performs. > I've done ZFS on root installs with > the shell and mounting the zpool to /mnt, would that work here too? Probably yes (never tried that myself). -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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