Re: manual install howto

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 06:45:05PM -0700, Al - image hosting services wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to do an install without the installer, so that I can put var
> and usr on their own drives.

One might ask why!

Usually they are put into separate partitions on a single disk.
(Actually /usr/bin and /usr/sbin only exist because disks were too small,
so some of the 'system' programs had to move into the partition used for
users' home directories. /home is now used to get user directories out
of system filestore.)

> I can't seem to find documentation on how to setup the drives for i386.

fdisk to define the mbr (bios) partition table and disklabel to edit
the partitions....

To makethe disk bootable you need:
1) fdisk to install one of the mbr_* files into sector zero of the disk
2) installboot to install one of the bootxx_* file into sector zero of the
   partition
3) have copied biosboot into /
(all files are in /usr/mdec)
It is easyest if the root filesystem is at the beginning of the mbr ptn.

> I have done many manual installs on other
> platforms and this never seemed to be an issue. Could someone point me in
> the right direction?
> 
> Please be sure to CC me because I am not on the i386 list.
> 
> Thanks,
> Al
> 
> 
> 
> 


        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost