Installing from USB Flash Drive

[Reid Linnemann]

Written by Andrey Shuvikov on 08/01/07 14:17>>
> On 8/1/07, Ross Penner <ross.penner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I'm trying to install a system on a machine that doesn't have an optical
>> drive. I plan on using a USB flash drive to do the job and found a
>> messages from hackers at freebsd.org
>> (http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org/msg55434.html)
>> about just such a thing. The script provided converts the CD image into
>> one suitable for a flashmemory stick. I used  and coverted it without
>> issue. The instructions say to use dd to prepare the flash drive so
>> executed
>> #dd if=flashbsd.iso of=/dev/da0
> 
> This will copy CD to USB sector-by-sector recreating CD filesystem
> (ISO-9660) on the stick. I don't think it's what system expects. I
> tried to do similar thing some time ago. I don't remember details but
> what I did was mounting CD-image and copying files from there to
> preformatted USB stick.

The script he referenced built a disk image from the iso-9660 fs to 
create his flashbsd.iso image - the .iso extension at this point is 
misleading. The script makes a dedicated freebsd memory disk, puts 
bootcode and a UFS filesystem on it, and copies the contents of the 
install CD to the UFS filesystem. It's this image that he is then dd'ing 
to the flash drive.