How to use USB memory-stick for booting FreeBSD?

Giorgos Keramidas keramida at ceid.upatras.gr
Sun Sep 25 22:48:39 PDT 2005


On 2005-09-25 22:32, Rob <spamrefuse at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>> By installing a FreeBSD base system on it (approx.  170 MB) and a
>> boot loader, and setting your BIOS to boot from "USB legacy device".
>
> Hmmm, how do I do that?

> After a system and kernel build, is it then something like 'make
> installworld' and 'make installkernel' into non-default destinations
> (i.e. mount-point of the USB stick) ?

First of all, you format and mount the USB disk somewhere.  Let's say,
under ``/mnt/usbdisk''.  Then, after you complete a buildworld and
buildkernel process, you can install the FreeBSD base system on the USB
disk by:

	# cd /usr/src
	# make DESTDIR=/mnt/usbdisk installkernel
	# make DESTDIR=/mnt/usbdisk installworld

This doesn't install a full /etc hierarchy in the USB disk, so you'll
have to run something like this too:

	# cd /usr/src/etc
	# make DESTDIR=/mnt/usbdisk distrib-dirs
	# make DESTDIR=/mnt/usbdisk distribution

Finally, you should create at least an /etc/fstab under the new root,
and you should be more or less set to go.

> I suppose one GigaByte should be enough for the base system of 5.4,
> isn't it?

Definitely.  The full base system (as I mentioned above) takes about
170 MB of disk space on i386 installations.



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