Re: Making a Compact Flash-based installer

From: Brian McCann (bjmccann_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/29/05

  • Next message: Gary Kline: "Re: Waaaaay OT, sorry."
    Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:00:29 -0500
    To: tsuraan <tsuraan@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
    
    

    I've booted off of CF before...and am doing so because the arrays are
    >2TB, and the BIOS won't boot from it. I just made a boot floppy,
    then DD'd it to the CF card. If your CF card is >640 (or 700) MB, you
    could do the same (DD from the CD to CF).

    Hope that helps.
    --Brian

    On 11/29/05, tsuraan <tsuraan@gmail.com> wrote:
    > I've been using a custom bootable CD for a while to install a
    > customized build of FreeBSD on servers, but now I have a unit that has
    > neither a CD-ROM drive nor any molex connectors at all. It does have
    > a pair of compact flash drives though. So, what I'd like to do is
    > transfer the data from my bootable CDs to a compact flash card, so I
    > can install off that instead. What I've tried so far is set up a new
    > disklabel on the drive (actually, on a file initialized with mdconfig)
    > that has its -b set to the CDs /boot/boot, and I've copied the
    > contents of the CD to the cf card. This results in a card that is
    > bootable, but the boot loader says the card is not ufs (it is), and it
    > can't find the kernel. The actual commands I'm using (from memory)
    > are:
    >
    > # dd if=/dev/zero of=mydrive bs=1m count=100
    > # mdconfig -a -t vnode -f cd.iso -u 0
    > # mount -t cd9660 /dev/md0 /cdrom
    >
    > # mdconfig -a -t vnode -f mydrive -u 1
    > # bsdlabel -w -B -b /cdrom/boot/boot md1
    > # newfs /dev/md1
    > # mount /dev/md1 /mnt
    > # cp -r /cdrom/* /mnt/
    >
    > # umount /mnt
    > # umount /cdrom
    > # mdconfig -d -u 1
    > # mdconfig -d -u 0
    >
    > # dd if=mydrive of=/dev/ad2
    >
    > So, has anyone done this, and actually had it work?
    > _______________________________________________
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    --
    _-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_
    Brian McCann
    Systems & Network Administrator, K12USA
    "I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
    people waiting to abuse me."
                    -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
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  • Next message: Gary Kline: "Re: Waaaaay OT, sorry."

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