# FreeBSD's Disk installation via PXE boot



## paul.kim (Jul 24, 2021)

Dear Helpers,

I am pretty much new to PXE installation and even System management.  (Please forgive me if any term is not vague or incorrect.)
Almost for 4 days, I have been struggling to install FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso into the hard disk but I am not sure about how I set the boot file configuration under pxelinux.cfg accordingly. 

BTW installing the image over the memory with mfsbsd is working good over pxe boot. I guess DHCP, TFTP, and HTTP setup seems good.   Here is the boot configuration file for msfbsd installation.



DEFAULT vesamenu.32
TIMEOUT 10
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE PXE Boot Menu (Main)

LABEL fbsd-pxe-install
        MENU LABEL Install FreeBSD 12.2 (PXE)
        MENU DEFAULT
        KERNEL memdisk
        INITRD http://172.16.0.2/bsd/fbsd/amd64/12.2-RELEASE/mfsbsd.iso
        APPEND iso raw


Now question I have is, what should be the boot configuration for the OS installation on the hard disk with the standard ISO image not mfsbsd?  
I tried to change the INITRD line with the standard ISO file like "INIRTD  http://172.16.0.2/bsd/fbsd/amd64/12.2-RELEASE/FreeBSD-12.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso"  but it didn't work at all.   Doesn't KERNEL value need to change to something else?     

Any comments or helps would be greatly appreciated!!

Best,
Paul


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## paul.kim (Jul 24, 2021)

Attached is the error I encountered with the following boot configuration file.


> DEFAULT vesamenu.32
> TIMEOUT 10
> PROMPT 0
> MENU TITLE PXE Boot Menu (Main)
> ...


 It seems that the system failed to correctly mount the root device.
I guess the boot configuration seems not correct but I don't have a good idea of how to fix this issue. 

Any helps I really appreciate. Please help~


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## Sha0 (Oct 15, 2022)

Good day.

If you are unfamiliar with x86' "protected mode," you might not understand the MemDisk documentation about how booted operating systems require a driver in order to access the MemDisk, once the operating systems have control.

You will be able to boot the El Torito ISO image only as far as the software on it uses BIOS INT 0x13 functions.  Once the FreeBSD kernel has been booted, a driver would be needed, as with most operating systems.

Until such a driver for FreeBSD is written, if you can identify the instructions to pass to the FreeBSD kernel in order for it to use a network-based filesystem, that might be an alternative for you and doesn't involve any MemDisk nor downloading an entire .ISO file to the booting computer.


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