Booting a mfs image from disk

Michael C. Cambria mcc at fid4.com
Sat May 24 11:29:30 PDT 2003


Hi,

Is there a way to boot an image (e.g. one that loads and boots via PXE)
from disk/flash?

I've successfully used PXE to boot a 4.8-stable image I created, using
the PXE articles found at http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html#articles

I've also been able to create an image that I write to compact flash and
boot from that for my net4521 (www.soekris.com) The CF is mounted read
only.

What I'd like to do now is boot the PXE image from the flash in lieu of
the PXE server.  I don't want the booted system to even know that there
is a "disk".

Can this be done?  I looked at what boot.flp does.  To accomplish this,
is it as simple as putting the kernel, mfs image and a /boot directory
(with the same loader.rc etc. used for pxe booting) on the flash?

Rather than continue to "reverse engineer", I'd like to know if there is
anything written already on how to do this?

For example, my pxe loader.rc needs:

    "set vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/md0c"

while boot.flp doesn't.  I can't find vfs.root.mountfrom in the man
pages.  Any pointers to more info would be helpfull.

Thanks,
MikeC


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