*BSD News Article 77386


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: howto creat a boot floppy w/ network support
Date: 31 Aug 1996 15:58:43 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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us@microtronic.de (Ulf Schmidt) wrote:

> - If I setup a new kernel config file and use fd0 as the boot device, the 
> kernel still install on my harddrive if I type make install. I think this is 
> strange.

You cannot establish a boot device in the config file, all you can do
there is specifying the *default* root device.  Note that this will
almost always be overridden at boot time by the actual device you have
been booting from.

Sysinstall doesn't support installation on floppies at all.

> - How could I manually install the kernel on a floppy?

disklabel -Brw fd0 fd1440
newfs -t0 -u0 -l1 -i65536 /dev/rfd0
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
cp /kernel /mnt
umount /mnt

> - What commands are necessary to create a boot- and a root floppy?

The boot floppy is above.  The root floppy is initially basically the
same, but you don't copy a kernel over to it.  Instead, you create a
regular file system, with the following minimal files on it:

	/bin/sh
	/sbin/init
	/dev/console

plus everything else you'd like to see there.

``Crunching'' the binary is highly recommended.  RTFM crunchgen(1) for
this, and see also the files under /usr/src/release/.

> I think there should be a FAQ or howto for this, or doesn't anyone else need 
> an emergency backup routine?

The provided fixit floppy is probably working well enough for most
folks.  Boot the installation floppy, select ``F)ixit'', and put the
fixit floppy in.  Note that this scenario is a little different from
the ``classic'' boot/root floppy pair i've described above.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)