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From: gary@wcs.uq.edu.au (Gary Roberts)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: FreeBSD -- mount me a floppy...
Date: 19 Jun 1994 12:36:44 GMT
Organization: University of Queensland
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <2u1e4s$qt8@dingo.cc.uq.oz.au>
References: <2u0ipu$cm2@agate.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: juno.wcs.uq.edu.au
tmonroe@soda.berkeley.edu (Anthony Monroe) writes:
>Hello again...
>Short and to the point: I recently recompiled my kernel and I want to test
>it out by booting off of a floppy. Problem is that I can't figure out a
>simple way to copy to floppy. I'm assuming that one must mount /dev/fd0 (or
>whatever the floppy drive "a:" is) as a filesystem first. But I may easily
>be wrong. After RTFMing and reading the FAQ and checking a book, I haven't
>found much that works. It's all rather confusing.
>I didn't bother to ask the Computer Science Undergraduate Association here
>'cause they tend to give hostile answers, if any at all...so a friendly
>answer (like those I have received here in the past) would be most
>appreciated. Thank you.
> Tony
You need to read the manual pages for disklabel and newfs.
To build a filesystem for a 1.44MB floppy, the commands you need are:-
disklabel -w -r fd0a floppy
newfs -m 0 -o space fd0a floppy
You can then mount this floppy (mount /dev/fd0a /mnt) and copy
whatever you like to it.
An alternative is to make a copy of your kernel copy floppy, mount it
and replace the kernel on it with your newly built kernel. That way
you have a floppy with other useful utilities as well. You can boot
this floppy to see if your kernel is OK.
However all this sounds like a lot of unnecessary fiddling around.
From the directory where you built your new kernel, why don't you
just do the following:-
mv /386bsd /386bsd.save
mv 386bsd /386bsd
Then you shutdown and reboot. If your new kernel is OK everything will
be fine and you can keep or dispose of /386bsd.save as you see fit.
If you have problems, just specify 386bsd.save at the boot prompt and
you will be flying with your previous kernel and you can try again :->.
I think there is a FAQ about building and testing kernels in the
FreeBSD-current/src/contrib area of freebsd.cdrom.com. I just tried
to look for it but that area is offline at the moment :-<. you might
like to check for yourself at a later stage.
Hope this helps.
--
Gary Roberts (gary@wcs.uq.edu.au) (Ph +617 844 0400 Fax +617 844 0444)
4th Floor, South Bank House, 234 Grey St, South Bank QLD 4101 Australia.