# Install FreeBSD from a rescue disk



## ghis26 (Jun 21, 2018)

Hi,

 I try to install FreeBSD on a server hosted afar, they provide mostly Linux server or FreeBSD but on UFS. So, I want to install a FreeBSD on ZFS 
 They have rescue disk you can launch to access your machine and one you can choose is FreeBSD 11.1 so I tried it.

 I was looking for a way to install the system on the disks so I launched bsdinstall:

```
setenv TERM xterm (my local machine is a linux ubuntu box)
bsdinstall
```

I chose the keyboard and get first error:

```
kdbcontrol: setting keymap: inappropriate ioctl for device
```
But I continued anyway choosing auto ZFS (RAID-Z1 on 3 disk, encrypted ...) then I chose main ftp site (tried several)  
then bsdinstall go on download base.txz and kernel.txz  parts  (that works) and then fail completely telling me :

```
─Fetch Error─────────────┐
│ Error while fetching              │  
│ file:///usr/freebsd-dist/MANIFEST │  
│ : No such file or directory
```
??

Any clue on how to proceed ? 
I have no clue why all of a sudden it would stop looking at the mirror and want a local media. 

Also after exiting properly i have a bunch of mounts left:

```
zroot/ROOT/default on /mnt (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
zroot/tmp on /mnt/tmp (zfs, local, noatime, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/usr/home on /mnt/usr/home (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
zroot/usr/ports on /mnt/usr/ports (zfs, local, noatime, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/usr/src on /mnt/usr/src (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/audit on /mnt/var/audit (zfs, local, noatime, noexec, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/crash on /mnt/var/crash (zfs, local, noatime, noexec, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/log on /mnt/var/log (zfs, local, noatime, noexec, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/mail on /mnt/var/mail (zfs, local, nfsv4acls)
zroot/var/tmp on /mnt/var/tmp (zfs, local, noatime, nosuid, nfsv4acls)
zroot on /mnt/zroot (zfs, local, noatime, nfsv4acls)
```
I attach the bsdinstall logs but saw no clues in it 

If i touch /usr/freebsd-dist/MANIFEST then I got an error of downloading Erro:.txz 


seems the bug is known from 2016:
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=213488

but there is no solution and what they talk about is Chinese for me

I tried

```
mkdir /usr/freebsd-dist/ 
cd /usr/freebsd-dist/ 
wget ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/11.1-RELEASE/MANIFEST
```
but why in earth would that be necessary ?

With that it continue (not been able to boot yet but I got the whole install). Is that normal? Why does we need to manually download this ?

best reagrds,
Ghislain.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 21, 2018)

Some things do depend on the rescue cd and what is and isn't on it, but maybe this can help:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/installing-freebsd-manually-no-installer.63201/

A guide I wrote a while ago which explains how you can install FreeBSD without the installer. So if that rescue disk contains an installable system (the main archives) then you should good. And if it doesn't then I assume you could always try to download them using fetch, store them on your main HD's and then extract them from there.


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## ghis26 (Jun 22, 2018)

thanks, yes it can be done. The part i don't get is that is the MANIFEST is not here it do not download it and just fails


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## ShelLuser (Jun 22, 2018)

What MANIFEST?

Just ignore that part, you'd only be interested in the archives anyway.


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## Yampress (Jul 3, 2018)

Vermaden FreeBSD ZFS madness install ...
follow this https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/howto-freebsd-zfs-madness.31662/
chapter:  Server with one/two disks


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