FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p7 i386 system drive imaging and migration

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2017, David Christensen wrote:

> On 01/29/17 21:18, Warren Block wrote:
>> On Sun, 29 Jan 2017, David Christensen wrote:
>> 
>>> On 01/29/17 05:27, Warren Block wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, David Christensen wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> What is the proper way to clone a FreeBSD system image from one drive
>>>>> to another?
>>>> 
>>>> On encrypted ZFS?  I'm not sure there is a brute-force way that is
>>>> trustworthy.  Using higher-level commands to recreate the partitions,
>>>> GELI encryption, and then zfs send | recv are certain safer and won't
>>>> duplicate supposedly unique IDs.
>>> 
>>> STFW
>>> 
>>> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/backup-basics.html
>>> 
>>> 
>>> toor at freebsd:/root # gpart show
>>> =>      63  31277169  ada0  MBR  (15G)
>>>        63         1        - free -  (512B)
>>>        64  31277160     1  freebsd  [active]  (15G)
>>>  31277224         8        - free -  (4.0K)
>>> 
>>> =>       0  31277160  ada0s1  BSD  (15G)
>>>         0   4194304       1  freebsd-zfs  (2.0G)
>>>   4194304   4194304       2  freebsd-swap  (2.0G)
>>>   8388608  22888544       4  freebsd-zfs  (11G)
>>>  31277152         8          - free -  (4.0K)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> It appears that my FreeBSD image lives within what Microsoft and Linux
>>> would call a single MBR primary partition (FreeBSD "slice"?), and that
>>> FreeBSD further subdivides that into boot, swap, and root sections
>>> (FreeBSD "partitions"?).
>> 
>> Yes.  I think the 11.0 installer made the mistaken assumption that
>> machines that boot from BIOS must (or should) use MBR/disklabel.
>
> I manually selected MBR partitioning scheme in the installer, as  I have 
> machines going back to Pentium 4's and I want something that will work on all 
> of them.

GPT will work on them, that is part of the function of the PMBR.

>> setenv PAGER less
>> man rc.conf
>> Type
>>   /ifconfig_DEFAULT
>> and press Enter.
>
> Yes, I tried that.  Interactive use:
>
> Pattern not found (press RETURN)

It is case sensitive.  Otherwise, don't know, it is found here.

> grep'ing the man page:
>
> dpchrist at freebsd:/usr/home/dpchrist $ man rc.conf | grep ifconfig_DEFAULT
> <nothing>

Sure, there are control characters mixed in with the output. Easier to 
search in the pager, but this will work:

   man rc.conf | col -b | grep ifconfig_DEFAULT

>>> The Xfce application issues appeared both when:
>>> 
>>> 1.  The FreeBSD system drive image was copied to another drive and
>>> then booted in the source machine.
>>> 
>>> 2.  The FreeBSD system drive was booted in another machine.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> What is causing the Xfce issues?
>> 
>> No idea.  I have moved hard drives from one machine to another, and in
>> fact wrote an installer that sets up FreeBSD to be used on a generic
>> machine with Xfce.
>
> Does it work on FreeBSD 11.0 i386?

The last time I tried it was with 10.x, I think.  It needs work, but has 
been very low-priority.