Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[Thomas Mueller]

> > I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier
> > version; I think it was a disk one rather than boot-only ...
> > If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it three?)
> > needed to boot the install system.

> If I've understood the 7.3 set correctly it's now up to five:  the
> initial boot, plus 3 for the kernel and one for the mfsroot image.

I just browsed ftp.freebsd.org, not to download anything: I see the number of
boot floppies is up to five for 7.3, and there is also a fixit.flp (i386).
For amd64, there are four floppies for the kernel, making six needed to boot,
but no fixit.flp

For FreeBSD 8.1 i386 and amd64, I could find no boot floppies.  Maybe they
could see the number of floppies was becoming too unreasonable, added to the
great unreliability of old floppies.

I see that the sets are still broken into 1392 KB chunks as base.aa, base.ab
and so on, wonder why they chose 1392 KB rather than 1440 KB.  Maybe to allow
for bad sectors revealed when formatting floppies?

> > You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may
> > be able to boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting
> > from CD or USB ...

> THANK YOU!!  It does indeed boot the machine from the 8.1-RELEASE
> USB memstick, solving the problem entirely.  This deserves to be
> better known.

Glad to know it worked for you, and convinces me that my successful boot of
NetBSD 4.0.1 from a USB stick was no fluke.


Tom
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[perryh]

"Thomas Mueller"  wrote:

> > Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot
> > floppy set?  (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.)
...
> I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier
> version; I think it was a disk one rather than boot-only ...
> If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it three?)
> needed to boot the install system.

If I've understood the 7.3 set correctly it's now up to five:  the
initial boot, plus 3 for the kernel and one for the mfsroot image.

> I never used zfs, don't have big enough hard drive or enough RAM
> to justify zfs.

Ditto, at least as to RAM (512MB, which I tend to think of as
_huge_ -- after all, "no one should ever need more than 640KB" :)
I still have a couple of _hard drives_ that are only 10MB each
sitting around somewhere.

> You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may
> be able to boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting
> from CD or USB ...

THANK YOU!!  It does indeed boot the machine from the 8.1-RELEASE
USB memstick, solving the problem entirely.  This deserves to be
better known.

> If I were in your situation, my first choice would be net install,
> assuming you have cable or DSL; dialup would be awful slow.

Even dialup would be faster (or at least a lot easier) than
installing the whole system from floppies.  By "boot floppy set"
I was referring to just the boot, kernel, and mfsroot needed to
get started.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[krad]

On 29 July 2010 10:17, Roland Smith  wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:50:12AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
> > I'm trying to solve a chicken-egg problem.
> 
> > Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
> > an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?
>
> Install 8.1 in an emulator like qemu or virtualbox to create the floppy
> images?
>
> Roland
> --
> R.F.Smith   
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
> [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
> pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
>

as long as the version of the os supports the file system you want and the
disk layout eg gpt you in theory can install any version of bsd from any
other version of bsd. After all the main os install is just and extract of
some tar balls. The only issue I can see might be the boot loader. But then
you could chroot into the installed os and use the boot loader from there. I
have definately installed a higher version of bsd than berfore but the
versions numbers escape me
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[Roland Smith]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:50:12AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
> I'm trying to solve a chicken-egg problem.

> Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
> an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?

Install 8.1 in an emulator like qemu or virtualbox to create the floppy images?

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)


pgpdF7IcU2Wrp.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[Thomas Mueller]

> Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot
> floppy set?  (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.)

> If not, are the 7.3 and 8.1 boot/loader files similar enough that
> the boot/loader from a 7.3 boot floppy "should" work when all else
> in the floppy set is from 8.1?

> Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
> an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?

I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier version; I think 
it was a disk one rather than boot-only.  You have to specify the version to 
install as 8.1-RELEASE exactly as the ftp servers do; exactly as you would do 
with freebsd-update.  If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it 
three?) needed to boot the install system.

I never used zfs, don't have big enough hard drive or enough RAM to justify zfs.

You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may be able to 
boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting from CD or USB.  My 
computer BIOS supports booting from CD but not USB; however NetBSD 4.0.1 
installed on a USB stick booted from PLoP.  There are various ways of 
running/installing PLoP, including installing on a floppy.  You might possibly 
then be able to boot from CD or ATAPI Iomega Zip-250.

If I were in your situation, my first choice would be net install, assuming you 
have cable or DSL; dialup would be awful slow.

I have problems finding errorfree floppies: might be able to find two or three 
to boot, if I'm lucky, but no way could I find enough good floppies to 
accommodate all those .aa, .ab, .ac ... files.


Tom
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[perryh]

I'm trying to solve a chicken-egg problem.

I need to boot from floppy to install 8.1, and I don't already have
a running 8.1 system on which to build a set of 8.1 floppy images.
(The machine in question is an oldish Pentium-III that only boots
from its hard drive or from floppy -- the BIOS claims it can also
boot from its ATAPI Zip-250 drive but that capability doesn't seem
to be working.)

By comparing the contents of the 7.3 bootonly ISO and the
corresponding floppy images, I've figured out how to construct
_almost_ everything on the floppies from the contents of the
bootonly ISO.  The exception is the boot floppy's boot/loader,
which is not the same as or obviously derivable from any file
on the bootonly ISO including the ISO's boot/loader (which has
changed between 7.3 and 8.1, else I'd feel reasonably safe about
trying to use the 7.3 boot floppy's boot/loader file).

So, in order of simplicity:

Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot
floppy set?  (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.)

If not, are the 7.3 and 8.1 boot/loader files similar enough that
the boot/loader from a 7.3 boot floppy "should" work when all else
in the floppy set is from 8.1?

Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"