Recovery CD for FreeBSD 5.2.1

[Matthew Seaman]

On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 12:32:04PM +0200, Christian Hofer wrote:

> I just installed FreeBSD and now would like to create a recovery CD. I 
> know that there is a recovery floppy, but my floppy drive is broken, so 
> I hope to find an appropriate CD image. For installation I used the 
> mini-iso-image, but it seems that it is impossible to start a recovery 
> session with it. And the "emergency shell" does not even know "ls". Is 
> it better to download the disc1-image? Does it provide recovery tools?

It's the disc-2 image that provides the recovery tools.  That disk
contains a bootable system with all of the standard tools available.
Or you could try one of the FreesBIE disk images from

   http://www.freesbie.org/ 

However, these disks are not substitutes for having good backups -- if
you trash the kernel images on your root partition, you can use one of
these disks to get the system to a state where you can copy a new
GENERIC kernel onto your drive, and reboot.  However you'll have to
make your own arrangements for recovering any custom kernel setup.
 
> BTW: Is there an online-howto for system recovery (just to be prepared)? 
> I could not find one.

What you need to do depends entirely on how you broke the system.
There are any number of online articles and archived messages from
mailing lists detailing with various specific problems.  Writing a
comprehensive 'how to recover your system from all of the possible
ways you could render it unbootable' would be task on the scale of
"War and Peace".  It's a mark of your developing prowess as a Unix
admin if you can recover badly hosed systems that others would be
forced to re-install.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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