Installer Workarounds

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks,

Still looking for tools missing on the installer CD,
but have a workaround using FreeBSD CD /stand/sysinstall.

Looking for more (intuitive) tools to be included on
future installers, but here is what I had to do today:

(and there may certainly be a better way....)

- Boot FreeBSD 4.X iso.

- slice the (200GB) HDD (ar0, actually) into two
(or more slices), so as to provide for more partitions.

- Optionally create partitons in each slice.

- do a 'W' to write it, not a 'Q'

Exit FreeBSD, swap CD's boot into DragonFlyBSD
installer.

Now the trick....

For installation, select 'part of..' the (ar0) disk, and
pick the part you *are not* going to put the
root partition on.  It will force you to have a
root partition anyway.  No sweat - this can be
recovered later.  Or used nicely.

Either make '/' small (256M) or full sized
(I use 2 to 4 GB) so that it can become a
'maintenance' boot-root later on.

Delete /usr, /var, /home, and partition
the rest of the slice as you want it.
Two big storage chunks for me...
I include a secondary swap here also.

'Accept' the results, ignore the warning
about /usr, /var, /home coming under '/'

Let it newfs the partitions, and more
importantly, write the DFLY-recognized
disklabel info to the media.

DO NOT install files (yet).

Instead, go back a couple of steps,
select the slice you DO want to install to,
set up partitions as you want them,
finish the install.

Once rebooted, you can test the results
by:

disklabel -r /dev/ar0s2

Create mount points: mkdir /svc  etc...

Manually mount -t ufs /dev/ar0s2a /svc
(as displayed by the disklabel -r read...)

fsck not needed, as these have not been used yet.

If all is well, edit /etc/fstab to pick up these
mounts on the second slice.

(Warren Hull is mined?)

Reboot and check that it does so.

Optionally, cpdup -vIo / /svc

Edit /svc/etc/fstab and swap mount points
of '/' and '/svc'.

Reboot and F1 gets you the 'primary' DFLY boot,
Reboot and F2 gets you the 'backup' or safety boot.

Confirm each with 'mount'.

Handy for maintenance if/as/when you clobber
something in the 'primary' root partition, such
as a mere comma-fault in /etc/rc.conf or a problematic
upgrade.

(Watch the flock happened to mined?)

Bill