Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 09:13:14 -0500 (EST) From: John Capo <jc@irbs.com> To: freebsd-current@freefall.cdrom.com (freebsd-current) Subject: Re: Repair floppies - what should we have? Message-ID: <199503081413.JAA15383@irbs.com> In-Reply-To: <199503080610.GAA15627@netfl15a.devetir.qld.gov.au> from "Stephen Hocking" at Mar 8, 95 04:10:20 pm
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Stephen Hocking writes: > > Recently a crash in the middle of a make world trashed my libc.so, and this > caused me to think long and hard about the issue of repair floppies. What I > came up with was this - > > 1) A boot floppy with only a kernel and enough support to tell you to > stick another floppy (the repair root fs) in the drive. This floppy > should have your last OK kernel on it (particularly if you have some > sort of weird hardware config that is not supported by the installation > floppy). > > 2) The tools floppy. A root filesystem with the usual stuff, linked > *statically* - /bin/sh, mount, fsck, disklabel, fdisk, tar, ed, cat, > cp, mv, ln, ifconfig (any other candidates?). The system would come > up on this and toss you into a shell. > > 3) The libraries floppy - a tarred floppy with all the important dynamic > libraries on it. > > Anybody else got ideas? And, how do I persuade something to boot a kernel off > one floppy and prompt me to insert a root fs? > As soon as the kernel is booted, stick the root floppy in the drive. If you have 8Megs or less you have to be quick. The bootcode used to prompt for a root floppy but it was removed when it became possible to fit enough stuff on one floppy to do an install. I use the crunchgen utility to build repair/install floppies. A good place to start is with fixit.conf in crunch/examples. Add or delete as necesary to meet your needs. I have a script that builds a tree with all the proper links if you are interested. > Stephen > > I do not speak for the Worker's Compensation Board of Queensland - > They don't pay me enough for that! > -- John Capo
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