Ramdisk support

[Oliver Fromme]

Aditya Godbole wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme wrote:
 > > Aditya Godbole wrote:
 > > > Is there any ramdisk support in freebsd, as there is in netbsd?
 > > > What are the alternatives if I want to mount a root filesytem from ram?
 > > 
 > > You mean a diskless setup?  I think there's a detailed
 > > description of diskless setups in the FreeBSD Handbook.
 > > You might also want to look at the diskless(8) manpage.
 > 
 > I was looking for something like initrd support of Linux or the
 > mdsetimage of NetBSD.

The boot loader can pre-load the root filesystem image as
an md(4) device, similar to loading a splash screen.  The
kernel option to enable that feature is called MD_ROOT, and
I think it's even enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.

You can also put the image of the root file system into the
kernel itself, so it doesn't have to be loaded separately.
The kernel option to allocate appropriate space is called
MD_ROOT_SIZE.

 > I have no disc or network card support for my hardware at the moment.

Then where are you booting from?  At least your kernel has
to come from somewhere, i.e. you need either networking or
some kind of media (disk, USB stick or similar).

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
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