# FreeBSD RELEASE-8.4



## balanga (Apr 13, 2016)

I realise that 8.4 is no longer supported but I'd just like to ask if anyone remembers how installs were done...

The reason is that I can use the *bootonly-iso* with PXE to do a remote boot and it gets as far as SYSINSTALL or BSDINSTALL (not sure which). 

With the next release, 9.0, it starts to boot, but then ends up at a mountroot prompt and I have no idea what to enter there.

But with 8.4 I am offered lots of options for booting, I can specify source, version. I can partition the local hard disk etc, altough I haven't quite figured out how...

If anyone knows of a guide to installing v8.* then please let me know...

Alternatively, since v9.0 has effectively booted via PXE, but halted waiting for magic words, what do I enter at the mountroot prompt


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2016)

9.0 came out four years ago.  Please try 10.3.


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## balanga (Apr 14, 2016)

Have just tried 10.3, although I had already tried every other version, and they all stop at the mountroot prompt....

It may be possible to carry on but I have no idea what to enter.

My guess is that the fstab in the 8.0 iso image allowed it to remote boot... I think I'll have to mount the iso and take a look


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## balanga (Apr 14, 2016)

Just a further update after looking into the ISOs of 8.4 and 9.0... 8.4 has an mfsroot.gz in the boot directory whereas 9.0 does not, so maybe I could add that to 9.0...

Unfortunately I don't know enough about FreeBSD's boot process to be able to hack this. Does FreeBSD have anything equivalent to DOS's autoexec.bat?


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## SirDice (Apr 14, 2016)

balanga said:


> Does FreeBSD have anything equivalent to DOS's autoexec.bat?


Yes, it's called rc(8).


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## balanga (Apr 14, 2016)

I don't see any rc with the bootonly ISO...

I guess I should familiarise myself with what is going on in the \boot directory....

It seems as though the mfsroot is the file I need to incorporate into a bootonly ISO to be able to create an ISO which boots via PXE.


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## SirDice (Apr 14, 2016)

Handbook: Chapter 12. The FreeBSD Booting Process


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2016)

Integrating new versions with old is going to be difficult.  There are easier ways, but I'd still like to know what reason there is to do this for an old, unsupported version of FreeBSD.


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## balanga (Apr 14, 2016)

I just want to be able to stick a FreeBSD bootonly ISO on my PXE server and boot from it, and maybe do an install.

Only v8 has this facility.

I've found that 8.4 could do that, at least boot, but not install, because it could not find a release version on ftp.freebsd.

Subsequent releases have removed the mfsroot from the ISO. However, I found I could boot from the 9.3 ISO if I hacked the ISO and copied loader.conf and mfsroot.gz from 8.4 to the boot directory of 9.3.

I also tried with 10.3 but that hung on booting.


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2016)

What makes you think only 8.x can do that?  See mfsBSD and this article: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/pxe.html.

That will boot into a fairly full-featured FreeBSD.  To do an install, run bsdinstall(8) or the special scripts included with mfsBSD.


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## balanga (Apr 15, 2016)

Have you tried this recently?

Your page is an excellent reference, but I find it impossible to use mfsBSD to install FreeBSD because the latest version is only for amd_64 and some of us still need i_386.

The older versions are for no longer supported versions of FreeBSD.

I have attempted to build mfsBSD myself several times but the result has been unsuccessful.


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## wblock@ (Apr 15, 2016)

I used the pre-built images from that site.  There is a i386 10.0 version which I have also used.  The installer images from FreeBSD.org can probably be used the same way, preloading either a CD or USB image into memory and booting from it.


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## gkontos (Apr 15, 2016)

In my experience, using CentOS for PXE server is way easier. Still FreeBSD needs tweaking for PXE boot. You will need to either create a modified RELEASE or use mfsBSD. You can build your own mfsBSD for i386 btw.


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## wblock@ (Apr 15, 2016)

A custom FreeBSD image is not required, several loaders are available that will PXE boot CD, DVD, or USB/hard drive images by loading them into memory.  Syslinux is one of those, as shown in that article.


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## balanga (Apr 16, 2016)

wblock@ said:


> I used the pre-built images from that site.  There is a i386 10.0 version which I have also used.  The installer images from FreeBSD.org can probably be used the same way, preloading either a CD or USB image into memory and booting from it.



The i386 10.0 version of mfsBSD attempts to install FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE which is no longer supported so fails.


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## balanga (Apr 16, 2016)

gkontos said:


> In my experience, using CentOS for PXE server is way easier. Still FreeBSD needs tweaking for PXE boot. You will need to either create a modified RELEASE or use mfsBSD. You can build your own mfsBSD for i386 btw.



I have tried building it several times but have not yet succeeded in making it boot properly...

It would be nice if was in FreeBSD's ports tree...


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