Re: concerns about install freebsd

From: Ian Smith <smithi_at_nimnet.asn.au>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2022 16:55:12 UTC 
On 30 September 2022 5:25:39 pm AEST, David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> wrote:
 > On 9/29/22 22:16, Ian Smith wrote:
 > > On 30 September 2022 6:07:47 am AEST, David Christensen
 > <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> wrote:
 > >   > On 9/28/22 23:04, jian he wrote:

[...]

 > >   > > Now, which one should I choose: bootonly.iso or disc.iso or
 > >   > > dvd1.iso?
 > > 
 > >   > Many newer machines do not have an optical drive, and USB flash
 > >   > drives
 > >   > have much faster access times, so I use "memstick.img":
 > >   >
 > >   > FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img.xz

 > > Since 12.1 and 13.0 (amd64 only) you can dd(1) the {-disc1, -dvd1
 > > or -bootonly}.iso to a USB memstick.
 > > 
 > > See the Release Announcement:
 > https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.1R/announce/ (or e.g. /12.3R/)

 > Okay.  Having a -dvd1 ISO on a USB flash drive could be useful when 
 > installing without an Internet connection.

It should be.  It was broken on 12.3R and presumably before, due to a bad symlink on the dvd1.iso, and needing so far three patches to bsdconfig, if hoping to use that.

Once fixed, it's a useful dialog(1) based interface to the included pkg repo, reminiscent of sysinstall in its heyday, if you like KDE 5 or Gnome on top of your Xorg.

For much too long a story on getting that working, see
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/installing-freebsd-12-3-from-dvd1-usb-without-network.84838/

I've yet to find out if it's been fixed on 13, and I'm still _slightly_ hopeful of getting some committer help in fixing it for 12.4, which enters code slush in a week.

 > One of things I like about the FreeBSD memstick image is that I can 
 > insert the USB flash drive into a FreeBSD computer, mount the root 
 > filesystem read-write, and make changes to the installer.  (E.g. by 
 > using the 5% spare blocks in the root filesystem.)  I doubt this
 > trick 
 > will work with a "hybrid ISO" on a USB flash drive.

Most likely right; it still mounts as a cd9660 filesystem and it's none too clear where the data lives.  OTOH, none if my laptops over the years has had only one USB port, and sticks are literally "cheap as chips" now.

<code>
root@t430s:~ # gpart show -p da0 da1
=>       3  15646709    da0  GPT  (7.5G)
         3        25  da0p2  freebsd-boot  (13K)
        28        52         - free -  (26K)
        80      1600  da0p1  efi  (800K)
      1680  15645032         - free -  (7.5G)

=>      63  60620737    da1  MBR  (29G)
        63         1         - free -  (512B)
        64  60620736  da1s1  fat32lba  (29G)

root@t430s:~ # mount -p | grep /m
/dev/da0                /media                  cd9660  ro              0 0
/dev/da1s1              /mnt                    msdosfs rw              0 0

root@t430s:~ # df | grep /m
/dev/da0       4386668  4386668        0   100%    /media
/dev/da1s1    30295568     1696 30293872     0%    /mnt
</code>

cheers, Ian