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From: Don Yuniskis <dgy@rtd.com>
Message-Id: <199608071806.LAA13977@seagull.rtd.com>
Subject: Re: Question about installing FreeBSD from floppies
To: offord@cig.mot.com (Garry Offord)
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 11:06:33 -0700 (MST)
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199608071337.JAA24090@po_box.cig.mot.com> from "Garry Offord" at Aug 7, 96 08:37:37 am
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It seems that Garry Offord said:
> 
> I have a (hopefully) simple question about installing FreeBSD from floppies.
> In section 2.2.2, "Before installing from Floppy" of the online installation
> manual (the URL is: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook13.html#13) it
> says: 
> 
> 	"The first floppy that you will need in addition to the boot.flp image is
> ``floppies/root.flp'', which is somewhat special in that it is not a DOS
> filesystem floppy at all, but rather a floppy "image" (it's actually a gzip'd
> cpio file). You can create this floppy in the same way that you created the
> boot floppy the beginning of this guide . Once this floppy is made, you can
> go on to make the distribution set floppies using ordinary DOS or UFS (if you
> are preparing the floppies on another FreeBSD machine) formatted diskettes."
> 
> Although I have read and understand the section on creating the boot floppy,
> I am really not sure what "floppies/root.flp" is supposed to contain, nor how
> to create it.

root.flp is not something you "create" but, rather, just another file
you download.  Once you have it in DOS, you create a floppy from it
using the rawrite.exe utility (just like the floppy you created from
boot.flp).  These aren't regular DOS "files" (well, technically, while they
reside on your DOS disk, they are files.  But, rawrite copies them
onto a *BLANK* disk as if they were disk images -- i.e. it starts at
the first sector of the disk and keeps pumping the "data"/image from
root.flp onto the disk until the disk has been completely written).
Note the size of these files tends to be the exact size of a floppy's
raw capacity -- coincidence?  Nope!  (granted, not all of them are
full floppy size).

Make sure the DOS floppy is formatted and does not contain a system, etc.

--don