On Oct 1, 11:22pm, James Porritt wrote:
> Subject: Installing RiscBSD
> As far as I see it you can install RiscBSD either from CD or floppy disc.
> Would it be possible to have all the sets downloaded onto your hard drive,
> and then transfer them into RiscBSD for installing? It would certainly be
> more convienient for me than having dozens of floppies to install.

You can. You can use Unixfs to do this. I'm not sure whether the version in the
'native' subdirectory of the bootloader will do the trick. Basically what you
have to do is partition the disk using the boot floppy as normal. Then your
create a directory to store files in (don't use /tmp) eg /distrib. Make the
directory world writeable with something like 'chmod a+rwx /distrib'. Next
reboot into RiscOS, fire up Unixfs and copy the distribution sets into
/distrib. Next time you boot RiscBSD off floppy to do the install you set the
distribution to be whereever you put the sets.

Note that there are a few restrictions on Unixfs: the directory has to be world
writeable and it has to be entirely within the range addressable by filecore.
As an example, if you have RiscOS 3.5 with a 400 Meg RiscOS partition, 32 Megs
for /, 64 Megs of swap and 360 Megs of /usr arranged in that order on the disk
you won't be able to access /usr from RiscOS because part of it is over the
512k limit. With RiscOS 3.6 there would be no problem, however.

Cheers

Rob

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