/boot on a separate partition

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Ross Kendall Axe wrote:

>
> That's what I'm going for now.  100MB in / and the rest of the disk 
> given to /usr and swap.  Bit of pain really, I thought the whole idea 
> of keeping the bootloader files in /boot was so that /boot could be a 
> separate partition.

Being pragmatic, the problems you are facing are because you have such a 
tiny disk in an ancient PC.  This puts you in a very small minority of 
FreeBSD users.  A separate /boot is new to 5.X and I doubt it was done 
to help you out of this situation.   Developer effort is limited and 
since FreeBSD has never used a separate /boot, it's unlikely to get 
anyone's attention to do it that way unless there is a very good reason, 
and tiny disks are unlikely to be it.

The oldest PC I have that runs FreeBSD (also a Pentium) has a 4 and an 
8Gb disk, and no problem booting off the ends of either.  It's who knows 
how old, and even charities don't want it because they can't think of 
anything useful that anyone could do with it, even if it was the bees 
knees when I got it.

Depending on where you are located, you might be able to find something 
very cheap (but still better than yours) in classifieds, computer fairs, 
2nd hand shops or the local tip.

Best,

--Alex