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Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 22:33:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
Reply-To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu
To: Garry Offord <offord@cig.mot.com>
cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Question about installing FreeBSD from floppies
In-Reply-To: <199608071337.JAA24090@po_box.cig.mot.com>
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On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, Garry Offord wrote:

> I have a (hopefully) simple question about installing FreeBSD from floppies.
> In section 2.2.2, "Before installing from Floppy" of the online installation
> manual (the URL is: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook13.html#13) it
> says: 
> 
> 	"The first floppy that you will need in addition to the boot.flp image is
> ``floppies/root.flp'', which is somewhat special in that it is not a DOS
> filesystem floppy at all, but rather a floppy "image" (it's actually a gzip'd
> cpio file). You can create this floppy in the same way that you created the
> boot floppy the beginning of this guide . Once this floppy is made, you can
> go on to make the distribution set floppies using ordinary DOS or UFS (if you
> are preparing the floppies on another FreeBSD machine) formatted diskettes."
> 
> Although I have read and understand the section on creating the boot floppy,
> I am really not sure what "floppies/root.flp" is supposed to contain, nor how
> to create it.

floppies/root.flp is a path to to the file root.flp which is in the
directory floppies (which is on the CD or ftp site).  

You used to make it the same way you built the boot.flp, using the rawrite
utility or dd.

root.flp USED to contain some low-level necessary files for installation,
however in 2.1.5 is has been removed.  

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major