RE: Set boot loader to boot off CD manually

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• In reply to: Daniel Goepp: "Set boot loader to boot off CD manually"
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Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:44:33 -0500 (EST)
To: Daniel Goepp <freebsd@goepp.com>

On 09-Dec-2003 Daniel Goepp wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was banging my head against the wall too long yesterday, so I have
> broken down, and have to ask. Any help on this matter is greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Here is what I'm trying to do. I have two computers, both running 4.8,
> clean, minimal installs. They have two serial cables connected to each
> other to act as serial consoles, and -Dh has been added to /boot.config,
> along with ttys having been updated. The console bit works great. What I
> want to be able to do, is completely rebuild one of the machines remotely.
> So I log into one, serial over to the other, and reboot it. Then, when
> the loader comes up, I stop it, and break to the "ok" prompt. I unload
> the kernel that was starting to load, and at this point, want to boot off
> CD, to rebuild the system, as though I had gone into the BIOS, and set the
> CD as the first boot device. However, I don't have remote access to the
> BIOS, so I can't do this.

The BIOS does not provide a way to talk to the CD to read files off of it
unless you boot from it. So, no, you can't boot from the hard drive and
read files off the CD from the loader. However, you can copy the kernel
and mfsroot off of the CD and stick them in /boot/new/kernel and
/boot/new/mfsroot.gz and then manually load the new kernel and mfsroot
from the hard disk's loader to get into the installer. I.e. something
like:

ok unload all
ok load /boot/new/kernel
ok load -t mfs_root /boot/new/mfsroot
ok boot

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/
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• Previous message: Peter Ulrich Kruppa: "Re: FBSD built in FTP server"
• In reply to: Daniel Goepp: "Set boot loader to boot off CD manually"
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