Installing from USB Flash Drive
Ross Penner
ross.penner at gmail.com
Wed Aug 1 21:39:41 UTC 2007
On 8/1/07, Reid Linnemann <lreid at cs.okstate.edu> wrote:
>
> 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?
>
I havn't. That's about to be my next step. Thanks for your words of advice.
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