Installing from USB Flash Drive

[Reid Linnemann]

Written by Ross Penner on 08/01/07 16:21>>
> On 8/1/07, *Reid Linnemann* < lreid at cs.okstate.edu 
> <mailto:lreid at cs.okstate.edu> > wrote:
> 
>     Written by Ross Penner on 08/01/07 13:34>>
>      > Hi everybody,
>      >
>      > I'm trying to install a system on a machine that doesn't have an
>     optical
>      > drive. I plan on using a USB flash drive to do the job and found a
>      > messages from hackers at freebsd.org <mailto:hackers at freebsd.org>
>      > (
>     http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org/msg55434.html
>     <http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org/msg55434.html>)
>      > about just such a thing. The script provided converts the CD
>     image into
>      > one suitable for a flashmemory stick. I used  and coverted it
>     without
>      > issue. The instructions say to use dd to prepare the flash drive so
>      > executed
>      > #dd if=flashbsd.iso of=/dev/da0
>      > I'm not entirely confident that that was the correct procedure,
>     as I'm
>      > quite unfamilar with dd. Unfortunetly, I can't seem to get the
>     drive to
>      > boot. I can mount the filesystem so it seems that prepareing the
>     drive
>      > was succesful. I'm using a via chipset and yes, the bios is set
>     to boot
>      > from USB-FDD. I used the 6.2 boot only image.
>      >
>      > Thanks for any insight you can provide me.
>      >
>      > Ross
>      >
> 
>     That seems correct to me. You may want to 'bsdlabel -B /dev/da0' after
>     writing the ufs image to it. The script you referenced does this to the
>     image before you write it to the flash drive, so the boot code should
>     already be there... but it appears to have gotten lost.
> 
> 
> Perhaps it never worked in the first place?
> 
>     rosbot# bsdlabel -B /dev/da0
>     bsdlabel: partition c doesn't cover the whole unit!
>     bsdlabel: An incorrect partition c may cause problems for standard
>     system utilities
> 
> I didn't do anything to the drive before dd'ing to it. Should have it 
> been prepared somehow? I assumed dd would 
> take care of partitions. There is a da0a and a da0c in /dev/ .
> 

No, that's just a warning message and does not prevent the bootcode from 
being installed. Have you ever booted any other system from this flash 
disk on this machine?