Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 17:06:03 -0500 From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> To: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: sysinstall and mfs Message-ID: <20100204220603.GA22022@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <201002042131.o14LVXPm037548@dc.cis.okstate.edu> References: <201002042131.o14LVXPm037548@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
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On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 03:31:33PM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote: > It appears that the same sysinstall executable that > works fine when run from the installation CDROM malfunctions > when run from a mfs platform even though it finds the disk it is > supposed to install on. > > One can format the disk manually and mount the > partitions under mfs, but sysinstall can't seem to do the > installation. This does not make sense, but that is the score > right now. I don't understand why you are trying to do your own MFS for this. You need to be booted to the MFS for it to make any difference and that is what the install image (from the CD) normally does. If you just create an MFS and copy sysinstall to it, it will make no difference in its ability to modify the labels on the system disks. They are already busy and you would have to reboot to unbusy them and then you lose the MFS. You could muck around and go down to Single User and maybe come up running from MFS and free up the disk, but don't know a way to do that. What happens when the boot or fixit is running is that you are booted to a special filesystem that resides in MFS. The system copies over what it needs from the CD (or floppies) and runs from there. Mainly it is a filesystem and it allows nothing else but the MFS and the boot media (CD/Floppy) to be mounted. Then the hard disk is free to diddle with the labels on. If you do an install of something on to the hard disk, then it creates a mount point within that Memory Filesystem and mounts the disk partition to it. I don't know the naming convention that it uses for the mount points, but it could be anything such as iroot, iusr, etc or maybe something based on the partition name such as mda1s1a, mda1s1d, etc. Maybe they make an mroot and then put the rest of the mount points in that mroot directory just like they will be in a running system. So, if there are more than root partitions they would look something like /mroot, /mroot/tmp, /mroot/usr, etc. Guess I should poke around sometime and see what they call them - sometime when I have a lot of extra time. The system uses these to install the software and then when it reboots, these temporary mount points disappear and when the new system comes up, it just uses the mount points written in the /etc/fstab file (or in the /mroot/etc/fstab file before the reboot when still doing the install) This is rambling too much. The point is that MFS is only meaningful in this situation if the system is booted and running from it. It does not mean anything to sysinstall otherwise. There are other uses for MFS such as a handy device for creating these boot images, but that has little bearing on how sysinstall runs. ////jerry > > Martin McCormick > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
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