Installing FreeBSD

with a custom Install CD

After several nights of trying to figure out why I couldn't boot FreeBSD 4.7 or FreeBSD 4.6.2 Install CDs, I finally got a custom installer working. Here is how you can do the same.

Basic Overview

Diagnose that it isn't a hardware issue.
Diagnose that it IS an installer CD issue.
Try to find a simpler solution with google and the FreeBSD handbook.
Copy the installer ISO to /usr/tmp/freebsd.
Replace the kernel w/ your good one.
Replace the boot-floppy kernel w/ your good one.
Write a new .iso file.
Burn your CD.

Details

Diagnoses:

Hardware:

This part is time consuming, but fairly simple. I was having a bunch of problems at the time, which is mainly why I wanted to wipe the system and start fresh. In my case I did roughly the following:

Swapped my CPU from one slot to another.
Re-seated my RAM.
Swapped my network and video cards to different slots.
Swapped floppy drives (turned out to be a bad cable).
Swapped CDROM drives (turned out to be my CDROM for my SGI, which doesn't boot an i386 hardware).
Tried it out with a PS/2 and a USB keyboard (had read an article that the PNP phase might freak out on some keyboards).
Upgraded my BIOS.
Tweaked, untweaked, and reset every relevant BIOS setting.
Removed every component possible:
- Extra hard drives.
- Floppy drive.
- Cards of any sort, except video and maybe network.

In the end, I had it down to:

A network card
A video card
A single SCSI hard drive (known to boot 4.6.x).
A single SCSI CDROM that boots the install CD.

Granted, I was dealing with a host of weird symptoms. I am still not entirely sure what it all was, I suspect I have a disk with some bad sectors in a critical area. Either way, I got it down to a stable subset that cood boot my good HD w/ 4.6.x on it. I just couldn't successfully boot the installer CD at this point.

Software:

Boot with the CD.
When the kernel has loaded and you get the boot prompt, hit space.
Type 'boot -v' at the prompt to boot in verbose mode.
Note where you freeze/crash/freak-out.

In my case, I always froze at:

isa_probe_children: Probing PnP devices

which is JUST before the pause to let the SCSI disks "settle".

This pretty much settled the case, by removing any troublesome hardware and getting things to a bare minimum, and thes seeing a very consistent problem, I was able to be certain that the problem was with the installer disk, and I wasn't going insane.

Research

I spent a fair amount of time reading through google and searching the FreeBSD handbook and mailing lists... Nothing really panned out. I found a number of people who had the same problem with much earlier versions (1+ years ago) and no credible solutions were provided for most of the cases. Those that were, simply didn't work for me.

Eventually, I decided that I needed a custom installer.

Copy the installer ISO to /usr/tmp/freebsd.

TODO

Replace the kernel w/ your good one.

TODO

Replace the boot-floppy kernel w/ your good one.

TODO

Write a new .iso file.

TODO

Burn your CD.

TODO

Requirements:

FreeBSD .iso for whatever version you want
A working /kernel for the hardware you have.
A CD recorder - can be on any system if you can transfer your .iso to it.
sysutils/mkisofs

Compatibility

Code

N/A

Crontab

N/A