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Date:      Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:01:35 -0500
From:      Steve Bertrand <steve@ibctech.ca>
To:        Matthias Apitz <guru@unixarea.de>
Cc:        Brian McCann <bjmccann@gmail.com>, Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD USB Install
Message-ID:  <4964C3CF.7000804@ibctech.ca>
In-Reply-To: <20090107143450.GA12360@rebelion.Sisis.de>
References:  <2b5f066d0901070525l3b928eb8j20fe48c67eeacba6@mail.gmail.com>	<20090107151702.48136fb1.freebsd@edvax.de> <20090107143450.GA12360@rebelion.Sisis.de>

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Matthias Apitz wrote:
> El día Wednesday, January 07, 2009 a las 03:17:02PM +0100, Polytropon escribió:
> 
>> On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 08:25:45 -0500, "Brian McCann" <bjmccann@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all.  I'm trying to install FreeBSD 7.1 off the CD to a USB thumb
>>> drive, but every time I try it fails.  sysinstall says "Unable to make
>>> new root filesystem on /dev/da0s1a1.  Command returned status 38".
>>> When I switch to the debug console, I get "cg 0: bad magic number".
>>> This thumb drive was being used on my Windows machine previously, then
>>> I re-formatted it as UFS to use it on a FreeBSD machine...so I know
>>> the thumb drive itself works.  Can someone shed some light on this
>>> problem?
>> I could only suggest to eliminate all slices and partitions on the
>> thumb drive (such as it was a new "disk" right from the factory)
>> and let sysinstall put slice and partitions onto it.
> 
> The problem is that 'from the factory' sometimnes they come already Windows-like
> formated; I've wiped out all with:
> 
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1m
> 
> (double check that /dev/da0 is really the device you want to clean)

sysinstall will provide you an option to erase any existing 'partitions'
 that exist on the drive during install, so the 'dd' is redundant.

I've never installed directly to a thumbdrive before. Normally I'd
install to a hard disk, pear it down, and then effectively copy the
system to the thumb drive manually. I end up with a system as such (so I
don't need a hard disk):

router# df -h
Filesystem    Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da0a     939M    410M    454M    47%    /
devfs         1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/md0       31M     20K     28M     0%    /tmp
/dev/md1       15M     36K     14M     0%    /var/run
/dev/md2       31M    318K     28M     1%    /var/log
/tmp           31M     20K     28M     0%    /var/tmp

That said, installing to a USB disk through sysinstall should
technically (AFAIK) be no different than installing to a standard SCSI
hard disk (da0).

What options are you supplying when you reach the 'FDISK Partition
Editor' screen?

Also, if you are installing the system via sysinstall that is running on
an already installed FreeBSD, you must use the 'w' option before 'q'.
Quit within the disk editor while running under FreeBSD does not imply
'write'. (This being opposed to booting from a CD to install).

Steve



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