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Date:      Sat, 06 Nov 1999 12:40:47 -0800
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        Juergen Lock <nox@jelal.kn-bremen.de>
Cc:        zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: easyboot far into disk 
Message-ID:  <199911062040.MAA07163@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 06 Nov 1999 12:43:40 %2B0100." <199911061143.MAA35365@saturn.kn-bremen.de> 

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> >Also, Linux can boot from a floppy.  Can FreeBSD does similar things (boot
> >from a floppy and then use data on the hard drive)? 
> 
> Seems so, use a modified kern.flp with your kernel and change its
> loader.rc: remove the loading of the mfsroot image and add a line
> that sets currdev to point to your root fs (you can use lsdev in
> the loader to find it), and you should be ready to go.  (I first
> tried setting rootdev instead but that seems to be getting ignored
> completely at least when booting from a floppy.)

Rootdev ought to work, actually.  But if you get it wrong, the loader 
will fall back to using currdev.a

>  Btw i remember reading in a commitlog that the concept of a `current
> device' in loader is about to go, so maybe now this no longer works in
> -current...

The model I'm currently looking at tries to hide the way the loader 
thinks about devices as much as possible simply because it's too 
confusing.  In -current the "best" way to tell your loaded kernel where 
to find its root filesystem is with the vfs.root.mountfrom tunable.

>  (Maybe this should be added to the FAQ as a method of last resort when
> the BIOS boot code can't see above cyl 1024?)

From what I've been hearing from people lately, in most cases it's 8GB 
that's the new sound barrier, but yes, a FAQ entry is probably worth 
writing.  Go to it!

-- 
\\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\  Mike Smith
\\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself,  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime.             \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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