*BSD News Article 5533


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From: goran@astro.uu.se (Goran Hammarback)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386BSD - what a pain to install!
Message-ID: <19r472INNnot@corax.udac.uu.se>
Date: 24 Sep 92 01:04:33 GMT
References: <1992Sep22.225256.25660@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> <1992Sep22.175431.1@vax.sonoma.edu> <19pph4INNp6j@disaster.Germany.EU.net>
Sender: goran@solaris.astro.uu.se (Goran Hammarback)
Organization: Uppsala University
Lines: 124
NNTP-Posting-Host: solaris.astro.uu.se

Here is a hint on how to make it slightly easier to disklabel your
disk for nonstandard partitioning.  First, boot from the dist.fs
(tiny BSD) disk, and let install do its thing.  Now you hopefully
have a disklabel on your disk to use as a starting point.
Now boot from the fixit disk, do mount -u /dev/fd0a / to make it writable,
and make some space with rm /[A-Z]*.  Now do disklabel -r -e wd0 (or as0)
and edit the disklabel to your liking (you still have to do the
calculation to let partitions end on cylinder boundaries and so on,
but that is not so hard since you can see all the data you need for
the disk.  Also check that the bad144 flag is not set for an IDE disk.).
Exit the diskedit and do diskedit -r wd0 (or as0).  If you have done the
editing correctly there should be no '*' in the last field for the
partitions showing the cylinders taken up by the partitions.  If there is,
use disklabel -e -r wd0 and check your values.
Now newfs the raw partitions for all the partitions except the swap
(b) partition (i.e. newfs /dev/rwd0a).
Now follow the instructions by e.g. Chris G. Demetriou (cgd@agate.berkely.edu)
in <148ersINNr9t@agate.berkely.edu>:

---------------------

(1) boot the fixit floppy                    \
(2) disklabel the disk as appropriate         }  do as above  (Goran)
(3) newfs the partitions                     /
(4) mount the new root partition under /mnt
(5) mkdir /mnt/usr
(6) mount the new /usr partition under /mnt/usr (if you made a separate usr part.)
(7) cpio directory-by-directory (recursively -- by hand!) the entire
	contents of the fixit floppy to the hard drive

	you'll do something like:

	cd /
	ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt
	cd /sbin
	ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt/sbin
	cd /usr
	ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt/usr
	cd /usr/bin
	ls | cpio -pdalmu /mnt/usr/bin

	etc.  yes, it's tiring.

(8) copy /usr/distbin/mount and /usr/distbin/umount to /mnt (so that
	they'll be in the new root partition, so you can mount the new
	/usr partition...)
 
8.5 umount /mnt     (Goran)

(9) shutdown
	and the eject the floppy.

(10) reboot off the hard drive, the fsck -p <root raw device>
	If there are any errors, after the fsck is done, hit
	ctl-alt-delete, and repeat this step.

(11) fsck -p <usr raw device>

(12) mount -u <root device> /

(13) mount <usr device> /usr

(14) insert 0.1 boot/install floppy (dist.fs) into floppy drive
	and "mount /dev/fd0a /mnt"

(15) cd /mnt
	and then
	usr/bin/zcat etc/baselist.Z | usr/bin/cpio -pdalmu /

(16) cd /
	and then
	/mnt/usr/bin/zcat /mnt/etc/baseutils.cpio.Z | /mnt/usr/bin/cpio -idalmu

(17) umount /mnt
(18) umount /usr
(19) shutdown	then eject the floppy

(20) reboot off the hard drive, and get all of the various files (the
	bindist files, srcdist files, etc...).
	I put them into /usr/tmp, because there wasn't enough space in
	/tmp (because it was on a small root partition...).

(21) cd / ; cat <all the binary files> | uncompress | cpio -idalmu


(22) rm <all the binary files>

(23) put your hostname into "/etc/myname" and put your ip addr/hostname
	into /etc/hosts.

(or replace 21-23 with the ordinary installation of the bindist, srcdist
 etc. using extract (if not on the hard disk extract is on the dist.fs,
 do mount /def/fd0a /mnt and get it.  Just remember the known ']' bug
 in the install.bin01 script  (Goran).)

(24) make an fstab for yourself.  specifically, you want something like:
	<root device name>	/	ufs rw 1 1
	<usr device name>	/usr	ufs rw 1 2

---------------------

The only `advantage' with my method I admit is that you don't have to
write a disktab entry to disklabel the disk, and I guess all UNIX
gurus sneer at this, but for mere mortals I think it's easier
to do disklabel -e than to write a disktab entry.

Hopefully someone will write an enhanced install utility to avoid
all this hassle, but as Bernard Steiner (bs@Germany.EU.net) wrote:
> This is an ALPHA system.
And non-commercial.  You can't expect it to be as easy to install
and use as a commercial system (although I suspect it will be,
given time).  Be grateful that someone has done all the hard work to
make this great system available on the PC (thanks Bill and Lynne).

-- 

Goran

------------------------------+---------------------------------
Goran Hammarback              |     goran@astro.uu.se
Astronomiska Observatoriet    |
Uppsala Universitet           |
S-751 20 SWEDEN               |
------------------------------+---------------------------------