Booting FreeBSD after first boot

Arun Sharma arun at sharma-home.net
Wed Nov 9 20:13:10 PST 2005


Peter Grehan wrote:
> Hi Arun,
> 
>> As suggested in the release notes, I used:
>> 0 > boot cd:,\boot\loader hd:xx
>>
>> to boot FreeBSD 6.0 the first time. But I'd like to boot FreeBSD 
>> without the CD. Since OF can't boot from UFS2, I created a small (1GB) 
>> HFS partition using the Apple disk utility.
>>
>> Now, how do I transfer /boot/loader into that partition, so that I can 
>> boot FreeBSD without using a CD?
> 
> 
>  I guess I dual-boot all my machines and copy the file into '/' from the 
> CD when in OSX. 

I was able to use hfsutils (hformat + hcopy) to achieve this.

>  For an automatic boot, you have to create a CHRP bootscript (an XML 
> text file) that will reside on the HFS partition. There's been a bit of 
> discussion about this on the list e.g. see:
> 
>   http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4352E005.4040203

Thanks for the pointer. I'm able to use:

<BOOT-SCRIPT>
" screen" output
boot hd:9,\loader hd:3
</BOOT-SCRIPT>

to autoboot. But I'd like to be able to control the boot loader over the 
ethernet. So I used:

<BOOT-SCRIPT>
" screen" output
" enet:telnet,192.168.x.y " io eval
boot hd:9,\loader hd:3
</BOOT-SCRIPT>

I was able to talk to OF over the network, but couldn't get it to boot.
I don't speak FORTH. So if someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong and 
tell me the magic script that:

a) Allows me to pick a kernel over the ethernet
b) autoboot to FreeBSD

I'd be very grateful. Also:

- Why is WITNESS enabled on UP kernels?
- Does anyone have gdb working?

I also built a few ports over the weekend (apache2/mysql/wordpress etc) 
if anyone is interested.

	-Arun


More information about the freebsd-ppc mailing list