# How to mount multiple partitions during installation



## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 10, 2019)

The installation disk tells me to:


> .... populate /tmp/bsdinstall_etc/fstab, and mount the file systems under /mnt.



I've got root, /var, /tmp, and /usr. How do I mount all those at the same time in /mnt?

Sorry, I forgot what I've done in the past,


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## tingo (Jun 10, 2019)

Like so:

```
/mnt (root)
/mnt/var
/mnt/tmp
/mnt/usr
```
HTH


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 10, 2019)

It seems so simple now you say it. I think I leaned over too far and a little piece of my brain fell off. 
Thanks.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 10, 2019)

Oops, I spoke too soon. It seems that it works for root, but when I type:

```
mount /dev/gpt/myvar /mnt/var
```
It says "mnt/var: no such file or directory".
What am I missing?
The fstab file has:

```
/dev/gpt/myroot  /
/dev/gpt/myvar  /var
tempfs       /tmp
/dev/gpt/myusr   /usr
```
(with the FStype/Options/Dump/Pass, of course)

Edit to add: typo above. tempfs should be tmpfs and indeed is entered as such in the fstab file.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 10, 2019)

After a couple of hours of net search and looking at our handbook, I can't find any instructions on how to mount multiple partitions from within the installer. I must be on the wrong track since nobody mentions it anywhere.

For now I tried making the directories within /mnt, which works for /var and /usr and /tmp. However I'm still stuck on mounting tempfs.

```
# mkdir /mnt/tmp
file exists
# mount tmpfs /mnt/tmp
mount: tmpfs; no such file or directory
```


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## ShelLuser (Jun 11, 2019)

Why do you think you need to do this in the first place? I fail to see what problem this is supposed to solve.

The installer also allows you to provide a specific destination to which your OS should be installed. Heck, and if you're really sure where the OS needs to be installed to....  you can always try to install it manually.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 11, 2019)

Yes, I seem to have gotten myself confused.  However, there is something about the installer which is eluding me. All I want to do is determine the partitions and their size. The graphical installer seems to go round and round. Something in the GUI is confusing me right now, to the point that it is useless to me. There is probably a way to use it for this, but reading the manual over and over again, is not resolving that problem. 

I'll start over, and use the instructions you linked above. Thanks.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 11, 2019)

I just now tried one more time using the installer, after doing a newfs on all partitions, it gives the same error:

```
Error while extracting base.txz: can't unlink already-existing object
```
I was following Warren Block's instructions which have worked just fine for me before.


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## Beastie (Jun 12, 2019)

Perhaps there's not enough disk space to extract the entire base? What version are you trying to install? Version 12 is bigger than the previous versions.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 12, 2019)

That may have been the problem with the drive that I was replacing. On this one I made a 50GB / partition and it's a freshly formatted drive. In the end the bigger problem turned out to be that the CPU does not support M.2 and the BIOS refuses to recognize it as a bootable device - although gpart seemed to find it, so did the FreeBSD installation disk. (thread here)


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