When a System Dies; Getting back in operation again.

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 1 May 2009, Martin McCormick wrote:

> Let's say we have a system that is backed up regularly and it
> vanishes in a puff of smoke one day. One can get FreeBSD
> installed on a new drive in maybe half an hour or so but we also
> need to get back to the right patch level and then we can say we
> are back where we started. If you do not have hot-swappable
> drives which we mostly do not, What is the best way to restore
> the full system?
>
> 	Can I use the FreeBSD installation disk in rescue mode?
> The idea would be to boot the CDROM, go in to rescue mode, mount
> the new drive which may be blank right now, and then use restore
> based on the last dump of the system we are trying to revive.

I've had success doing a minimal install from CD, booting from the new 
drive, and then restoring dumpfiles right over it.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA