From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 20 23:48:34 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5F4A106568B for ; Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:48:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rfg@tristatelogic.com) Received: from outgoing.tristatelogic.com (segfault.tristatelogic.com [69.62.255.118]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C38618FC08 for ; Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:48:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from segfault-nmh-helo.tristatelogic.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.tristatelogic.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68756BDC46 for ; Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:48:34 -0800 (PST) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <7872.1258759936@tristatelogic.com> Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:48:34 -0800 Message-ID: <7972.1258760914@tristatelogic.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Subject: Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:48:35 -0000 [[ To: Michael Powell ... please accept my apologies that you can't e-mail me directly. I jsyt get too much spam from hotmail.com, so it's blacklisted here. Nothing personal. ]] In message <7872.1258759936@tristatelogic.com>, Michael Powell wrote: rfg: >>> The problem(s) occurs with FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), >>> 7.0-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.2-RELEASE/i386 Live Filesystem (CD), and >>> 7.2-RELEASE/amd64 Live Filesystem (CD). >> >>Try 8RC3 and see if any difference. I believe some work in this area may >>have occurred. As I said (in my other post) that didn't help. :-( But... While researching this problem (BTX v. SATA) I saw where someone recommended booting from floppy first. So I went and started to download images on boot floppies. I haven't used this install/booting method for ages and ages, but I vaguely recalled that you could get rolling with just a single boot floppy. But now I see where they say you need the first boot floppy and then three more "kernel" floppies! Yikes! Sounds like a bit of a pain. So that gave me a Swell Idea. I though "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if we could put all this stuff into one single image and ``burn'' it onto a bootable USB thumb drive! I should definitely write to the FreeBSD developers and suggest this Great Idea.'' But of course, since you directed me to 8.0-RC3, I had to go groveling around in the relevant FTP directories to get that stuff, and while I was there, of course, I saw: 8.0-RC3-amd64-memstick.img Yippie! Some smart FreeBSD deloper is already way ahead of me! Marvelous! Now all I need is instructions for how to use that .img file. (Fortunately, I have a spare USB 1GB flash drive lying around.) So I go groveling around, trying to find some mention of this .img file in the README.TXT files and I find nothing. But Google is my friend, and I found this: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2009-July/051018.html which gives instructions for ``burning'' the image onto USB/flash. But I have one question. The author sez to do this: dd if=8.0-BETA1-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync I just want to know what the effect of conv=sync and why it might be necessary. Anybody happen to know? Why can't you just dd the thing?