No floppy-images for FreeBSD 8.0 installation anymore?

[Aiza]

>> herbert langhans writes:
>>
>>  I cannot boot this computer from the SCSI-CD drives. Is there any
>>  chance to get 8.0 for floppies?
>> 	I do not believe there are (by default) floppies for 8.0;
>> whether this is new for this release of not I cannot say.
>> 	Is the machine modern enough it could boot from a USB-connected
>> CDROM?
>>
 > Yes,
 > just checked it. There is a 'boot from usb-cdrom' option in the 
setup. >I guess I have to sacrifice a usb-stick for the installation. 
Will it >work this way?
 >
 > This is not yet updated in the the handbook -- but the 
 >8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img seems to be a file I have to dump on 
the >usb-stick. Is this the boot-file I need for the ftp-install?

The memstick.img is very large because it contains fixit. I download the 
smaller disc1.iso and then use the following script to write it to a usb 
stick drive. There is no need to do a FTP-install because the disc1.iso 
has everything needed to install from.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that some bios older that 2008 do 
not have option to boot from USB sticks or only can boot from some 
vendors USB sticks not all of them.

#!/bin/sh
#Purpose = Use to transfer the FreeBSD install cd1 to
#      a bootable 1GB USB flash drive so it can be used to install from.
#      First fetch the FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso to your
#      hard drive /usr. Then execute this script from the command line
#
# fbsd2usb /usr/8.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso /usr/8.0-disc1.img
#
# Change system bios to boot from USB-dd and away you go.

# NOTE: This script has to be run from root and your 1GB USB flash drive
#       has to be plugged in before running this script.

# On the command line enter    fbsd2usb iso-path img-path

# You can set some variables here. Edit them to fit your needs.

# Set serial variable to 0 if you don't want serial console at all,
# 1 if you want comconsole and 2 if you want comconsole and vidconsole
serial=0

set -u

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
     echo "Usage: $0 source-iso-path output-img-path"
     exit 1
fi

isoimage=$1; shift
imgoutfile=$1; shift

# Temp  directory to be used later
#export tmpdir=$(mktemp -d -t fbsdmount)
export tmpdir=$(mktemp -d /usr/fbsdmount)

export isodev=$(mdconfig -a -t vnode -f ${isoimage})

ISOSIZE=$(du -k ${isoimage} | awk '{print $1}')
SECTS=$((($ISOSIZE + ($ISOSIZE/5))*4))
#SECTS=$((($ISOSIZE + ($ISOSIZE/5))*2))

echo " "
echo "### Initializing image File started ###"
echo "### This will take about 1 minute ###"
date
dd if=/dev/zero of=${imgoutfile} count=${SECTS}
echo "### Initializing image File completed ###"
date

echo " "
ls -l ${imgoutfile}
export imgdev=$(mdconfig -a -t vnode -f ${imgoutfile})

bsdlabel -w -B ${imgdev}
newfs -O1 /dev/${imgdev}a

mkdir -p ${tmpdir}/iso ${tmpdir}/img

mount -t cd9660 /dev/${isodev} ${tmpdir}/iso
mount /dev/${imgdev}a ${tmpdir}/img

echo " "
echo "### Started Copying files to the image now ###"
echo "### This will take about 6 minutes ###"
date

( cd ${tmpdir}/iso && find . -print -depth | cpio -dump ${tmpdir}/img )

echo "### Completed Copying files to the image ###"
date

if [ ${serial} -eq 2 ]; then
         echo "-D" > ${tmpdir}/img/boot.config
         echo 'console="comconsole, vidconsole"' >> 
${tmpdir}/img/boot/loader.conf
elif [ ${serial} -eq 1 ]; then
         echo "-h" > ${tmpdir}/img/boot.config
         echo 'console="comconsole"' >> ${tmpdir}/img/boot/loader.conf
fi

echo " "
echo "### Started writing image to flash drive now ###"
echo "### This will take about 16 minutes ###"
date
dd if=${imgoutfile} of=/dev/da0 bs=1m
echo "### Completed writing image to flash drive at ###"
date

cleanup() {
     umount ${tmpdir}/iso
     mdconfig -d -u ${isodev}
     umount ${tmpdir}/img
     mdconfig -d -u ${imgdev}
     rm -rf ${tmpdir}
}

cleanup

ls -lh ${imgoutfile}

echo "### Script finished ###"