Solved How to install with a disk that's already prepared?

[Chris_H]

Ok, I've dealt with this before. But today, for the life of me, I can't remember the magic.
I've already sliced (gpart(8)ed), and formatted (newfs(8)ed) the drive, and want to perform a fresh (FreeBSD) install.
I do not want the install process to remake, and format the drive. How do I accomplish that with the regular install process (I already know I can just unpack the distributions into the already created/formatted slices). As memory serves I need to create an fstab(5) in /tmp. But I think it has to be named specifically.
Why isn't this in the install portion of the FreeBSD docs?

Thank you for all your time, and consideration.

--Chris

 

[k.jacker]

...with the regular install process

I guess you are not talking about the 'regular' install process, but the manual setup from the shell?

If you just drop to the shell to configure your disks manually, there will appear a short explanation on top, which has almost all information you need.
At least it says, where the fstab has to be created and that you have to mount your filesystems and extract the distribution files onto them.
If I recall correctly, kernel.txz and base.txz are in some place like /bin/freebsd-dist/ or similar.
When you're done, you type exit and return to bsdinstall, which will install all other neccessary configuration files with the stuff you configured earlier (e.g. keymap, network).
That's it.

I assume you don't need any more details since you say you done it before, but if... ask

 

[Chris_H]

k.jacker
Right you are!
I had already dumped my fstab(5) file into /tmp. But still knew I was missing something. I got impatient and chose INSTALL, hoping if I kept performing an ls(1) into /tmp, I'd get a clue. Well, when I got to the disk layout dialog, I chose manual, and low-and-behold, there it was; a banner that described the exact details I was looking for. So I simply moved my fstab(5) file from /tmp to /tmp/bsdinstall_etc/. Entered exit. Done!

Thanks for the reply, k.jacker !

P.S. Yep. I've done it before. I just need to upgrade my (mental) RAM

--Chris

 

[k.jacker]

Nice