From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Feb 16 21:21:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA24732 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 16 Feb 1997 21:21:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from murkwood.gaffaneys.com (dialup14.gaffaneys.com [134.129.252.33]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA24726 for ; Sun, 16 Feb 1997 21:21:30 -0800 (PST) Received: (from zach@localhost) by murkwood.gaffaneys.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA12639; Sun, 16 Feb 1997 23:22:16 -0600 (CST) From: Zach Heilig Message-ID: <19970216232214.21349@gaffaneys.com> Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 23:22:14 -0600 To: Snob Art Genre Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: booting question References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.61.1 In-Reply-To: ; from Snob Art Genre on Feb 02, 1997 at 06:15:00PM -0800 Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Feb 02, 1997 at 06:15:00PM -0800, Snob Art Genre wrote: > On Sun, 16 Feb 1997, Bill Northlich wrote: > > Hi, > > The manual says that the FreeBSD root file system must be within the > > 1st 504 mb. of the disk, else booting wont work (p. 27). However, > > could I put it out on the end of the disk and boot from floppy every > > time? Thanks, > Yeah. Just a few points: yeah it does work, and it's harder to install if you don't have a wd0 disk. I seem to have a broken BIOS in my SCSI controller (it doesn't recognize any of my devices on boot, works great after the kernel gets done with it). Since I rarely reboot, this isn't much of an inconvenience. Basically, the situation is: The boot option '-a' appears broken. It's supposed to ask for a root device sometime during boot. This forces you to use '-r' to mount a root other than the boot device, meaning you have to use a line: 'config root on ' (wd0 in GENERIC). So if you have to put your root device on something other than wd0, you have to jump through a couple hoops during the install to also build a new kernel during the install. -- Zach Heilig (zach@blizzard.gaffaneys.com) | ALL unsolicited commercial email Support bacteria -- it's the only | is unwelcome. I avoid dealing form of culture some people have! | with companies that email ads.