Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

"Thomas Mueller" <mueller6727 at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot
> > floppy set?  (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.)
...
> I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier
> version; I think it was a disk one rather than boot-only ...
> If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it three?)
> needed to boot the install system.

If I've understood the 7.3 set correctly it's now up to five:  the
initial boot, plus 3 for the kernel and one for the mfsroot image.

> I never used zfs, don't have big enough hard drive or enough RAM
> to justify zfs.

Ditto, at least as to RAM (512MB, which I tend to think of as
_huge_ -- after all, "no one should ever need more than 640KB" :)
I still have a couple of _hard drives_ that are only 10MB each
sitting around somewhere.

> You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may
> be able to boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting
> from CD or USB ...

THANK YOU!!  It does indeed boot the machine from the 8.1-RELEASE
USB memstick, solving the problem entirely.  This deserves to be
better known.

> If I were in your situation, my first choice would be net install,
> assuming you have cable or DSL; dialup would be awful slow.

Even dialup would be faster (or at least a lot easier) than
installing the whole system from floppies.  By "boot floppy set"
I was referring to just the boot, kernel, and mfsroot needed to
get started.