Disaster recovery planning

[pippo at bellnet.ca]

At 09:12 PM 6/24/2003 +1000, you wrote:
>Here's how I plan to recover a system from a level 0 backup to
>new hardware, if ever the need arises:
>
>1. boot off installation CD (or floppy??)
>2.   disklabel, make filesystems (using sysinstall)
>3.   restore root filesystem and mount it
>4.   change fstab and various configs to work with new hardware
>5. boot in single user mode, fix fstab and devices, restore other filesystems
>6. boot multiuser and fix anything that still doesn't work
>
>I'm upgrading using cvsup and don't have recent CDs.
>I know I can make my own bootable CD to keep for this purpose, but I
>don't want to rely on it being found in a crisis if there is a more
>generic method.
>
>Can I do this by booting off an _old_ FreeBSD CD? How old, I mean,
>what sort of changes do I need to look out for?
>
>I think I need the fixit CD too, I couldn't just use the holographic
>shell even if feeling masochistic... or could I?
>
>Could it be done just using a couple of quickly downloaded boot
>floppy images, in which case I'd only need to document the URL for
>the current floppies?

I seem to be in the unfortunate situation you fear and cannot find a 
suitable solution.
I had to change the hardware but I can still boot up - however, I can only 
boot up with a 4.5 Generic kernel; the 4.8 SMP kernel freezes and I do not 
have a 4.8 generic kernel on the machine (I don't know why, I do on another 
machine).
I believe I only need to reconfigure and compile a new kernel, but for the 
life of me I cannot figure out how to go about this. I am not sure if I 
could reconfigure an appropriate kernel if I boot with the 4.5 generic. 
kWill that create a new kernel in version 4.5? And then, would I have to 
re-upgrade to 4.8 and rebuild the world?

The simples would seem to be to boot with a 4.8 generic kernel, tkhen build 
a new kernel. But how?
I'm not sure how booting from a floppy would work, especially since FreeBSD 
is set up on scsi (on a dual boot machine, XP is on another SCSI disk).
Network is also inacessible as the ethernet card has been changed.
Things are more complicated yet, as the new system is on an MSI 875P 
motherboard with on-board Gigabit ethernet and serial ata; they are not 
listed under hardware compatibility.

Any help is appreciated.

Pippo