Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 01:51:45 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@freebsd.org> To: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> Cc: vincent@netaktiv.com, tech@gitoyen.net, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BTX on USB pen drive Message-ID: <20080307095145.GA21904@eos.sc1.parodius.com> In-Reply-To: <47D10F9D.4040603@quip.cz> References: <200803061742.34291.vincent@netaktiv.com> <200803071059.48837.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <47D10F9D.4040603@quip.cz>
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On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 10:49:17AM +0100, Miroslav Lachman wrote: > Daniel O'Connor wrote: > >> On Fri, 7 Mar 2008, Vincent Mialon wrote: >>> I tested various options in boot0cfg with no sucess. I also tested >>> the howto from >>> http://typo.submonkey.net/articles/2006/04/13/installing-freebsd-on-u >>> sb-stick-episode-2 with a 6.3 FreeBSD release which boots on my pc but >>> doesn't boot on my supermicro server. >>> >>> Do you have any idea or pointer that may help me find the way to boot >>> this usb drive ? I may file a bug report if you want. >> I wanted to make a USB flash drive based installer for FreeBSD but >> unfortunately BTX seems to have issues that make it difficult to do >> reliably :( > > I did it in the past. I have 512MB USB flashdisk with 30MB bootable > partition from miniboot.iso (FreeBSD 6.2) with GRUB. I used it to install > system on Sun Fire X2100 servers without CD-ROM. > >> Here are 2 patches I tried.. >> http://people.freebsd.org/~kib/realbtx >> http://people.freebsd.org/~jhb/patches/btx_crx.patch >> They improved things but I still found a number of systems where BTX would >> spin dumping register info so fast I couldn't read it (or take a photo..). >> Unfortunately I have no idea how you'd debug this sort of thing, it's too >> much like DOS programming for me :) >> FWIW when it did work it was great :) I used FreeSBIE as my base - it has >> stuff to build USB images in CVS (v2). http://www.freesbie.org/ >> I don't know if it's possible to use GRUB or something like that instead >> of BTX.. I have no experience with it, but I would be very interested if >> it did work (although since GRUB is i386 only and I use amd64 systems >> that's another hurdle..) > > I think you can use GRUB, because it is used in stage where all systems > works the same way and amd64 kernel will be booted in later stage. All of what you've said is correct. I'm not sure who's having problems with GRUB on USB sticks, because yes, it does work. (There are some USB stick models, however, which do not support booting. That's a vendor/manufacturer problem however.) -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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