GELI on root partition -- problems

[Fluffles]

R. B. Riddick wrote:
> --- Fluffles <etc at fluffles.net> wrote:
>   
>> guess). It seems many things in FreeBSD assume the "a" partition to be /
>> (root), and that it holds the kernel. So really, *how* do i setup this
>> GELI-on-root feature?
>>
>>     
> Hi!
>
> I have no experience with geli, but I like to install without sysinstall...
>   
Hm i'd like to do that -- just a minimal install with "base" and
"kernel" is fine. But how? I searched google and handbook but cannot
find instructions to install manually.

Right now i installed FreeBSD on a USB pendrive. Very convenient because
now i can just access the harddrive and use GELI on it. The Freesbie
livecd is based on FreeBSD-5.3 which does not support GELI. Now that i
have FreeBSD 6.1 on my pendrive, here's what i want to do:

1) configure my harddrive disks (fdisk + disklabel)
2) create GELI partition (init the disk with -b option so it asks for
passphrase during boot; so the encrypted root partition can be mounted)
3) manually install FreeBSD onto the /boot and encrypted / (root) partition
4) configure /boot/loader.conf and other required stuff
5) let the system boot from HDD and see if it works

Regarding step 2: I can extract the archives of base and kernels, they
are on the install cd and "base" even has an install.sh script. But i
guess installing is more than copying files: i should make the slice
(ad0s3) bootable; so that my BIOS or boot loader like GAG can boot from
it. How is that done?

> I hope I dont cause any damage with my "advice" and that u have sufficient
> backup...
>   
My harddrive does not have valuable data on it; so i can't fsck up
anything. :)

Thanks for your help!

- Veronica