Boot and Install from USB?

[Nikolas Britton]

On 7/28/06, Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/28/06, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC <chad at shire.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Jul 27, 2006, at 11:32 PM, Nikolas Britton wrote:
> >
> > > Floppy and CD-ROM drives, why do I need them? They take up to much
> > > chassis real estate and I never use them after the server is in
> > > production. Why can't I do all this stuff with USB?
> > >
> > > If I got a USB flash, USB CD-ROM, and/or a USB floppy drive what could
> > > I do with it?
> > >
> > > * Boot into DOS to run BIOS updates?
> > > * Load the FreeBSD CD to a flash drive and boot / install from it?
> > >
> > > I see no reason to keep buying them, there like tits on a bull.
> >
> > None of my servers have floppies or cdrom or any optical drives.  I
> > keep a couple floppies and a dvd and a cdrom around and if I need on
> > I plug it in for the duration of the need...
> >
>
> Been there done that. It's a pain in the butt:
>
> 1. Power down
> 2. Take cover off
> 3. Plug in drive
> 4. Put cover back on
> 5. Power on
> 6. Re-enable BIOS support for device.
> 7. Do what needs to be done
> 8. Power down
> 9. Take cover off
> 10. Unplug drive
> 11. Put cover back on
> 12. Power on
> 13. Disable BIOS support for device.
>
>

Ok I just bought some stuff to experiment with:

* USB Floppy: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16821103510
* USB to IDE Adapter:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812156101
* USB Flash Drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820233008

Well see what happens! What I really want is to install FreeBSD using
the USB Flash Drive. IIRC from a post long ago FreeBSD had problems
with this. IIRC dd would format the USB Flash drive in ISO9660, Like a
CD. So I think I'll have to roll my own images. Maybe the RELENG team
could make USB Flash into an official image, like the CD ISOs, for
FreeBSD 6.2.


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