diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks/chapter.sgml index c023895ca4..d7b1cb3d70 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks/chapter.sgml @@ -1,1202 +1,1207 @@ Disks Synopsis This chapter covers how to use disks, whether physical, memory, or networked, on FreeBSD. BIOS Drive Numbering Before you install and configure FreeBSD on your system, there is an important subject that you should be aware of if, especially if you have multiple hard drives. DOS Microsoft Windows In a PC running DOS or any of the BIOS-dependent operating systems (WINxxx), the BIOS is able to abstract the normal disk drive order, and the operating system goes along with the change. This allows the user to boot from a disk drive other than the so-called primary master. This is especially convenient for some users who have found that the simplest and cheapest way to keep a system backup is to buy an identical second hard drive, and perform routine copies of the first drive to the second drive using Ghost or XCOPY . Then, if the first drive fails, or is attacked by a virus, or is scribbled upon by an operating system defect, he can easily recover by instructing the BIOS to logically swap the drives. It's like switching the cables on the drives, but without having to open the case. SCSI BIOS More expensive systems with SCSI controllers often include BIOS extensions which allow the SCSI drives to be re-ordered in a similar fashion for up to seven drives. A user who is accustomed to taking advantage of these features may become surprised when the results with FreeBSD are not as expected. FreeBSD does not use the BIOS, and does not know the logical BIOS drive mapping. This can lead to very perplexing situations, especially when drives are physically identical in geometry, and have also been made as data clones of one another. When using FreeBSD, always restore the BIOS to natural drive numbering before installing FreeBSD, and then leave it that way. If you need to switch drives around, then do so, but do it the hard way, and open the case and move the jumpers and cables. An illustration from the files of Bill and Fred's Exceptional Adventures: Bill breaks-down an older Wintel box to make another FreeBSD box for Fred. Bill installs a single SCSI drive as SCSI unit zero, and installs FreeBSD on it. Fred begins using the system, but after several days notices that the older SCSI drive is reporting numerous soft errors, and reports this fact to Bill. After several more days, Bill decides it's time to address the situation, so he grabs an identical SCSI drive from the disk drive "archive" in the back room. An initial surface scan indicates that this drive is functioning well, so Bill installs this drive as SCSI unit four, and makes an image copy from drive zero to drive four. Now that the new drive is installed and functioning nicely, Bill decides that it's a good idea to start using it, so he uses features in the SCSI BIOS to re-order the disk drives so that the system boots from SCSI unit four. FreeBSD boots and runs just fine. Fred continues his work for several days, and soon Bill and Fred decide that it's time for a new adventure -- time to upgrade to a newer version of FreeBSD. Bill removes SCSI unit zero because it was a bit flaky, and replaces it with another identical disk drive from the "archive." Bill then installs the new version of FreeBSD onto the new SCSI unit zero using Fred's magic Internet FTP floppies. The installation goes well. Fred uses the new version of FreeBSD for a few days, and certifies that it is good enough for use in the engineering department...it's time to copy all of his work from the old version. So Fred mounts SCSI unit four (the latest copy of the older FreeBSD version). Fred is dismayed to find that none of his precious work is present on SCSI unit four. Where did the data go? When Bill made an image copy of the original SCSI unit zero onto SCSI unit four, unit four became the "new clone," When Bill re-ordered the SCSI BIOS so that he could boot from SCSI unit four, he was only fooling himself. FreeBSD was still running on SCSI unit zero. Making this kind of BIOS change will cause some or all of the Boot and Loader code to be fetched from the selected BIOS drive, but when the FreeBSD kernel drivers take-over, the BIOS drive numbering will be ignored, and FreeBSD will transition back to normal drive numbering. In the illustration at hand, the system continued to operate on the original SCSI unit zero, and all of Fred's data was there, not on SCSI unit four. The fact that the system appeared to be running on SCSI unit four was simply an artifact of human expectations. We are delighted to mention that no data bytes were killed or harmed in any way by our discovery of this phenomenon. The older SCSI unit zero was retrieved from the bone pile, and all of Fred's work was returned to him, (and now Bill knows that he can count as high as zero). Although SCSI drives were used in this illustration, the concepts apply equally to IDE drives. Disk Naming IDE SCSI RAID fash memory Physical drives come in two main flavors, IDE, or SCSI; but there are also drives backed by RAID controllers, flash memory, and so forth. Since these behave quite differently, they have their own drivers and devices. Physical Disk Naming Conventions Drive type Drive device name IDE hard drives ad in 4.0-RELEASE, wd before 4.0-RELEASE. IDE CDROM drives acd from 4.1-RELEASE, wcd before 4.0-RELEASE. SCSI hard drives da from 3.0-RELEASE, sd before 3.0-RELEASE. SCSI CDROM drives cd Assorted non-standard CDROM drives mcd for Mitsumi CD-ROM, scd for Sony CD-ROM, matcd for Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM Floppy drives fd SCSI tape drives sa from 3.0-RELEASE, st before 3.0-RELEASE. IDE tape drives ast from 4.0-RELEASE, wst before 4.0-RELEASE. Flash drives fla for DiskOnChip Flash device from 3.3-RELEASE. RAID drives myxd for Mylex, and amrd for AMI MegaRAID, idad for Compaq Smart RAID. from 4.0-RELEASE. id between 3.2-RELEASE and 4.0-RELEASE.
Slices and Partitions slices partitions dangerously dedicated Physical disks usually contain slices, unless they are dangerously dedicated. Slice numbers follow the device name, prefixed with an s: da0s1. Slices, dangerously dedicated physical drives, and other drives contain partitions, which represented as letters from a to h. b is reserved for swap partitions, and c is an unused partition the size of the entire slice or drive. This is explained in . Mounting and Unmounting Filesystems The filesystem is best visualized as a tree, rooted, as it were, at /. /dev, /usr, and the other directories in the root directory are branches, which may have their own branches, such as /usr/local, and so on. root filesystem There are various reasons to house some of these directories on separate filesystems. /var contains log/, spool/, and various types of temporary files, and as such, may get filled up. Filling up the root filesystem isn't a good idea, so splitting /var from / is often a good idea. Another common reason to contain certain directory trees on other filesystems is if they are to be housed on separate physical disks, or are separate virtual disks, such as Network File System mounts, or CDROM drives. The fstab File filesystems mounted with fstab During the boot process, filesystems listed in /etc/fstab are automatically mounted (unless they are listed with ). The /etc/fstab file contains a list of lines of the following format: device /mount-point fstype options dumpfreq passno device is a device name (which should exist), as explained in the Disk naming conventions above. mount-point is a directory (which should exist), on which to mount the filesystem. fstype is the filesystem type to pass to &man.mount.8;. The default FreeBSD filesystem is ufs. options is either for read-write filesystems, or for read-only filesystems, followed by any other options that may be needed. A common option is for filesystems not normally mounted during the boot sequence. Other options in the &man.mount.8; manual page. dumpfreq is the number of days the filesystem should be dumped, and passno is the pass number during which the filesystem is checked during the boot sequence. The mount Command filesystems mounting The &man.mount.8; command is what is ultimately used to mount filesystems. In its most basic form, you use: &prompt.root; mount device mountpoint There are plenty of options, as mentioned in the &man.mount.8; manual page, but the most common are: mount options Mount all filesystems in /etc/fstab, as modified by , if given. Do everything but actually mount the filesystem. Force the mounting the filesystem. Mount the filesystem read-only. fstype Mount the given filesystem as the given filesystem type, or mount only filesystems of the given type, if given the option. ufs is the default filesystem type. Update mount options on the filesystem. Be verbose. Mount the filesystem read-write. The takes a comma-separated list of the options, including the following: nodev Do not interpret special devices on the filesystem. Useful security option. noexec Do not allow execution of binaries on this filesystem. Useful security option. nosuid Do not interpret setuid or setgid flags on the filesystem. Useful security option. The umount Command filesystems unmounting The &man.umount.8; command takes, as a parameter, one of a mountpoint, a device name, or the or option. All forms take to force unmounting, and for verbosity. and are used to unmount all mounted filesystems, possibly modified by the filesystem types listed after . , however, doesn't attempt to unmount the root filesystem. Adding Disks disks adding Originally contributed by &a.obrien; 26 April 1998 Lets say we want to add a new SCSI disk to a machine that currently only has a single drive. First turn off the computer and install the drive in the computer following the instructions of the computer, controller, and drive manufacturer. Due the wide variations of procedures to do this, the details are beyond the scope of this document. Login as user root. After you've installed the drive, inspect /var/run/dmesg.boot to ensure the new disk was found. Continuing with our example, the newly added drive will be da1 and we want to mount it on /1 (if you are adding an IDE drive, it will be wd1 in pre-4.0 systems, or ad1 in most 4.X systems). partitions slices fdisk Because FreeBSD runs on IBM-PC compatible computers, it must take into account the PC BIOS partitions. These are different from the traditional BSD partitions. A PC disk has up to four BIOS partition entries. If the disk is going to be truly dedicated to FreeBSD, you can use the dedicated mode. Otherwise, FreeBSD will have to live with in one of the PC BIOS partitions. FreeBSD calls the PC BIOS partitions slices so as not to confuse them with traditional BSD partitions. You may also use slices on a disk that is dedicated to FreeBSD, but used in a computer that also has another operating system installed. This is to not confuse the fdisk utility of the other operating system. In the slice case the drive will be added as /dev/da1s1e. This is read as: SCSI disk, unit number 1 (second SCSI disk), slice 1 (PC BIOS partition 1), and e BSD partition. In the dedicated case, the drive will be added simply as /dev/da1e. Using &man.sysinstall.8; sysinstall adding disks You may use /stand/sysinstall to partition and label a new disk using its easy to use menus. Either login as user root or use the su command. Run /stand/sysinstall and enter the - Configure menu. With in the + Configure menu. Within the FreeBSD Configuration Menu, scroll down and select the Partition item. Next you should be presented with a list of hard drives installed in your system. If you do not see da1 listed, you need to recheck your physical installation and dmesg output in the file /var/run/dmesg.boot. Select da1 to enter the FDISK - Partition Editor. Choose A to + Partition Editor. Type A to use the entire disk for FreeBSD. When asked if you want to remain cooperative with any future possible operating systems, answer YES. Write the changes to the disk using W. Now exit the - FDISK editor using q. Next you will be + FDISK editor by typing q. Next you will be asked about the Master Boot Record. Since you are adding a disk to an already running system, choose None. BSD partitions - Next enter the Disk Label Editor. This + Next, Sysinstall will + enter the Disk Label Editor. This is where you will create the traditional BSD partitions. A - disk can have up to eight partitions, labeled a-h. A few of + disk can have up to eight partitions, labeled a-h. + A few of the partition labels have special uses. The a partition is used for the root partition (/). Thus only your system disk (e.g, the disk you boot from) should have an a partition. The b partition is used for swap partitions, and you may have many disks with swap partitions. The c partition addresses the entire disk in dedicated mode, or the entire FreeBSD slice in slice mode. The other partitions are for general use. - Sysinstall's Label editor favors the e - partition for non-root, non-swap partitions. With in the - Label editor, create a single file system using - C. When prompted if this will be a FS - (file system) or swap, choose FS and give a + Sysinstall's Label editor + favors the e + partition for non-root, non-swap partitions. Within the + Label editor, create a single file system by typing + C. When prompted if this will be a FS + (file system) or swap, choose FS and type in a mount point (e.g, /mnt). When adding a - disk in post-install mode, Sysinstall will not create entries + disk in post-install mode, Sysinstall + will not create entries in /etc/fstab for you, so the mount point you specify isn't important. You are now ready to write the new label to the disk and - create a file system on it. Do this by hitting - W. Ignore any errors from Sysinstall that + create a file system on it. Do this by typing + W. Ignore any errors from + Sysinstall that it could not mount the new partition. Exit the Label Editor - and Sysinstall completely. + and Sysinstall completely. The last step is to edit /etc/fstab to add an entry for your new disk. Using Command Line Utilities Using Slices This setup will allow your disk to work correctly with other operating systems that might be installed on your computer and will not confuse other operating systems' fdisk utilities. It is recommended to use this method for new disk installs. Only use dedicated mode if you have a good reason to do so! &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda1 bs=1k count=1 &prompt.root; fdisk -BI da1 #Initialize your new disk &prompt.root; disklabel -B -w -r da1s1 auto #Label it. &prompt.root; disklabel -e da1s1 # Now edit the disklabel you just created and add any partitions. &prompt.root; mkdir -p /1 &prompt.root; newfs /dev/da1s1e # Repeat this for every partition you created. &prompt.root; mount -t ufs /dev/da1s1e /1 # Mount the partition(s) &prompt.root; vi /etc/fstab # When satisfied, add the appropriate entry/entries to your /etc/fstab. If you have an IDE disk, substitute ad for da. On pre-4.X systems use wd. Dedicated OS/2 If you will not be sharing the new drive with another operating system, you may use the dedicated mode. Remember this mode can confuse Microsoft operating systems; however, no damage will be done by them. IBM's OS/2 however, will appropriate any partition it finds which it doesn't understand. &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda1 bs=1k count=1 &prompt.root; disklabel -Brw da1 auto &prompt.root; disklabel -e da1 # create the `e' partition &prompt.root; newfs -d0 /dev/rda1e &prompt.root; mkdir -p /1 &prompt.root; vi /etc/fstab # add an entry for /dev/da1e &prompt.root; mount /1 An alternate method is: &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda1 count=2 &prompt.root; disklabel /dev/rda1 | disklabel -BrR da1 /dev/stdin &prompt.root; newfs /dev/rda1e &prompt.root; mkdir -p /1 &prompt.root; vi /etc/fstab # add an entry for /dev/da1e &prompt.root; mount /1 Virtual Disks: Network, Memory, and File-Based Filesystems virtual disks disks virtual Aside from the disks you physically insert into your computer: floppies, CDs, hard drives, and so forth; other forms of disks are understood by FreeBSD - the virtual disks. NFS Coda disks memory These include network filesystems such as the Network Filesystem and Coda, memory-based filesystems such as md and file-backed filesystems created by vnconfig. vnconfig: file-backed filesystem disks file-backed &man.vnconfig.8; configures and enables vnode pseudo disk devices. A vnode is a representation of a file, and is the focus of file activity. This means that &man.vnconfig.8; uses files to create and operate a filesystem. One possible use is the mounting of floppy or CD images kept in files. To mount an existing filesystem image: Using vnconfig to mount an existing filesystem image &prompt.root; vnconfig vn0 diskimage &prompt.root; mount /dev/vn0c /mnt To create a new filesystem image with vnconfig: Creating a New File-Backed Disk with vnconfig &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=newimage bs=1k count=5k 5120+0 records in 5120+0 records out &prompt.root; vnconfig -s labels -c vn0 newimage &prompt.root; disklabel -r -w vn0 auto &prompt.root; newfs vn0c Warning: 2048 sector(s) in last cylinder unallocated /dev/rvn0c: 10240 sectors in 3 cylinders of 1 tracks, 4096 sectors 5.0MB in 1 cyl groups (16 c/g, 32.00MB/g, 1280 i/g) super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at: 32 &prompt.root; mount /dev/vn0c /mnt &prompt.root; df /mnt Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/vn0c 4927 1 4532 0% /mnt md: Memory Filesystem disks memory filesystem md is a simple, efficient means to do memory filesystems. Simply take a filesystem you've prepared with, for example, &man.vnconfig.8;, and: md memory disk &prompt.root; dd if=newimage of=/dev/md0 5120+0 records in 5120+0 records out &prompt.root; mount /dev/md0c /mnt &prompt.root; df /mnt Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/md0c 4927 1 4532 0% /mnt Disk Quotas accounting disk space disk quotas Quotas are an optional feature of the operating system that allow you to limit the amount of disk space and/or the number of files a user, or members of a group, may allocate on a per-file system basis. This is used most often on timesharing systems where it is desirable to limit the amount of resources any one user or group of users may allocate. This will prevent one user from consuming all of the available disk space. Configuring Your System to Enable Disk Quotas Before attempting to use disk quotas it is necessary to make sure that quotas are configured in your kernel. This is done by adding the following line to your kernel configuration file: options QUOTA The stock GENERIC kernel does not have this enabled by default, so you will have to configure, build and install a custom kernel in order to use disk quotas. Please refer to the Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel section for more information on kernel configuration. Next you will need to enable disk quotas in /etc/rc.conf. This is done by adding the line: enable_quotas=YES disk quotas checking For finer control over your quota startup, there is an additional configuration variable available. Normally on bootup, the quota integrity of each file system is checked by the quotacheck program. The quotacheck facility insures that the data in the quota database properly reflects the data on the file system. This is a very time consuming process that will significantly affect the time your system takes to boot. If you would like to skip this step, a variable is made available for the purpose: check_quotas=NO If you are running FreeBSD prior to 3.2-RELEASE, the configuration is simpler, and consists of only one variable. Set the following in your /etc/rc.conf: check_quotas=YES Finally you will need to edit /etc/fstab to enable disk quotas on a per-file system basis. This is where you can either enable user or group quotas or both for all of your file systems. To enable per-user quotas on a file system, add the userquota option to the options field in the /etc/fstab entry for the file system you want to enable quotas on. For example: /dev/da1s2g /home ufs rw,userquota 1 2 Similarly, to enable group quotas, use the groupquota option instead of the userquota keyword. To enable both user and group quotas, change the entry as follows: /dev/da1s2g /home ufs rw,userquota,groupquota 1 2 By default the quota files are stored in the root directory of the file system with the names quota.user and quota.group for user and group quotas respectively. See man fstab for more information. Even though that man page says that you can specify an alternate location for the quota files, this is not recommended because the various quota utilities do not seem to handle this properly. At this point you should reboot your system with your new kernel. /etc/rc will automatically run the appropriate commands to create the initial quota files for all of the quotas you enabled in /etc/fstab, so there is no need to manually create any zero length quota files. In the normal course of operations you should not be required to run the quotacheck, quotaon, or quotaoff commands manually. However, you may want to read their man pages just to be familiar with their operation. Setting Quota Limits disk quotas limits Once you have configured your system to enable quotas, verify that they really are enabled. An easy way to do this is to run: &prompt.root; quota -v You should see a one line summary of disk usage and current quota limits for each file system that quotas are enabled on. You are now ready to start assigning quota limits with the edquota command. You have several options on how to enforce limits on the amount of disk space a user or group may allocate, and how many files they may create. You may limit allocations based on disk space (block quotas) or number of files (inode quotas) or a combination of both. Each of these limits are further broken down into two categories; hard and soft limits. hard limit A hard limit may not be exceeded. Once a user reaches his hard limit he may not make any further allocations on the file system in question. For example, if the user has a hard limit of 500 blocks on a file system and is currently using 490 blocks, the user can only allocate an additional 10 blocks. Attempting to allocate an additional 11 blocks will fail. soft limit Soft limits, on the other hand, can be exceeded for a limited amount of time. This period of time is known as the grace period, which is one week by default. If a user stays over his or her soft limit longer than the grace period, the soft limit will turn into a hard limit and no further allocations will be allowed. When the user drops back below the soft limit, the grace period will be reset. The following is an example of what you might see when you run the edquota command. When the edquota command is invoked, you are placed into the editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable, or in the vi editor if the EDITOR variable is not set, to allow you to edit the quota limits. &prompt.root; edquota -u test Quotas for user test: /usr: blocks in use: 65, limits (soft = 50, hard = 75) inodes in use: 7, limits (soft = 50, hard = 60) /usr/var: blocks in use: 0, limits (soft = 50, hard = 75) inodes in use: 0, limits (soft = 50, hard = 60) You will normally see two lines for each file system that has quotas enabled. One line for the block limits, and one line for inode limits. Simply change the value you want updated to modify the quota limit. For example, to raise this users block limit from a soft limit of 50 and a hard limit of 75 to a soft limit of 500 and a hard limit of 600, change: /usr: blocks in use: 65, limits (soft = 50, hard = 75) to: /usr: blocks in use: 65, limits (soft = 500, hard = 600) The new quota limits will be in place when you exit the editor. Sometimes it is desirable to set quota limits on a range of uids. This can be done by use of the option on the edquota command. First, assign the desired quota limit to a user, and then run edquota -p protouser startuid-enduid. For example, if user test has the desired quota limits, the following command can be used to duplicate those quota limits for uids 10,000 through 19,999: &prompt.root; edquota -p test 10000-19999 See man edquota for more detailed information. Checking Quota Limits and Disk Usage disk quotas checking You can use either the quota or the repquota commands to check quota limits and disk usage. The quota command can be used to check individual user and group quotas and disk usage. Only the super-user may examine quotas and usage for other users, or for groups that they are not a member of. The repquota command can be used to get a summary of all quotas and disk usage for file systems with quotas enabled. The following is some sample output from the quota -v command for a user that has quota limits on two file systems. Disk quotas for user test (uid 1002): Filesystem blocks quota limit grace files quota limit grace /usr 65* 50 75 5days 7 50 60 /usr/var 0 50 75 0 50 60 grace period On the /usr file system in the above example this user is currently 15 blocks over the soft limit of 50 blocks and has 5 days of the grace period left. Note the asterisk * which indicates that the user is currently over his quota limit. Normally file systems that the user is not using any disk space on will not show up in the output from the quota command, even if he has a quota limit assigned for that file system. The option will display those file systems, such as the /usr/var file system in the above example. Quotas over NFS NFS Quotas are enforced by the quota subsystem on the NFS server. The &man.rpc.rquotad.8; daemon makes quota information available to the &man.quota.1; command on NFS clients, allowing users on those machines to see their quota statistics. Enable rpc.rquotad in /etc/inetd.conf like so: rquotad/1 dgram rpc/udp wait root /usr/libexec/rpc.rquotad rpc.rquotad Now restart inetd: &prompt.root; kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid` Creating CDs CDROMs creating Contributed by Mike Meyer mwm@mired.org, April 2001. Introduction CDs have a number of features that differentiate them from conventional disks. Initially, they weren't writable by the user. They are designed so that they can be read continuously without delays to move the head between tracks. They are also much easier to transport between systems than similarly sized media were at the time. CDs do have tracks, but this refers to a section of data to be read continuously and not a physical property of the disk. To produce a CD on FreeBSD, you prepare the data files that are going to make up the tracks on the CD, then write the tracks to the CD. ISO 9660 filesystems ISO-9660 The ISO 9660 file system was designed to deal with these differences. It unfortunately codifies file system limits that were common then. Fortunately, it provides an extension mechanism that allows properly written CDs to exceed those limits while still working with systems that do not support those extensions. mkisofs The mkisofs program is used to produce a data file containing an ISO 9660 file system. It has options that support various extensions, and is described below. You can install it with the /usr/ports/sysutils/mkisofs port. CD burner ATAPI Which tool to use to burn the CD depends on whether your CD burner is ATAPI or something else. ATAPI CD burners use the burncd program that is part of the base system. SCSI and USB CD burners should use the cdrecord from the /usr/ports/sysutils/cdrecord port. mkisofs mkisofs produces an ISO 9660 file system that is an image of a directory tree in the Unix file system name space. The simplest usage is: &prompt.root; mkisofs imagefile.iso /path/to/tree filesystems ISO-9660 This command will create an imagefile containing an ISO 9660 file system that is a copy of the tree at /path/to/tree. In the process, it will map the file names to names that fit the limitations of the standard ISO 9660 file system, and will exclude files that have names uncharacteristic of ISO file systems. Read &man.mkisofs.8; for details of this process, and options that can be used to control it. filesystems HFS filesystems Joliet A number of options are available to overcome those restrictions. In particular, enables the Rock Ridge extensions common to Unix systems, enables Joliet extensions used by Microsoft systems, and can be used to create HFS file systems used by Macs. Read &man.mkisofs.8; for more information on the last two. For CDs that are going to be used only on FreeBSD systems, can be used to disable all filename restrictions. When used with , it produces a file system image that is identical to the FreeBSD tree you started from, though it may violate the ISO 9660 standard in a number of ways. CDROMs creating bootable The last option of general use is . This is used to specify the location of the boot image for use in producing an El Torito bootable CD. This option takes an argument which is the path to a boot image from the top of the tree being written to the CD. So, given that /tmp/myboot holds a bootable FreeBSD system with the boot image in /tmp/myboot/boot/cdboot, you could produce the image of an ISO 9660 file system in /tmp/bootable.iso like so: &prompt.root; mkisofs boot/cdboot /tmp/bootable.iso /tmp/myboot Having done that, if you have vn configured in your kernel, you can mount the file system with: &prompt.root; vnconfig vn0c /tmp/bootable.iso &prompt.root; mount cd9660 /dev/vn0c /mnt At which point you can verify that /mnt and /tmp/myboot are identical. There are many other options you can use with mkisofs to fine-tune its behavior. See &man.mkisofs.8; for details. burncd CDROMs burning If you have an ATAPI CD burner, you can use the burncd command to burn an ISO image onto a CD. burncd is part of the base system, installed as /usr/sbin/burncd. Usage is very simple, as it has few options: &prompt.root; burncd cddevice data imagefile.iso fixate Will burn a copy of imagefile.iso on cddevice. The default device is /dev/acd0. See &man.burncd.8; for options to set the write speed, eject the CD after burning, and write audio data. cdrecord If you do not have an ATAPI CD burner, you will have to use cdrecord to burn your CDs. cdrecord is not part of the base system; you must install it from either the port at /usr/ports/sysutils/cdrecord or the appropriate package. Changes to the base system can cause binary versions of this program to fail, possibly resulting in a coaster. You should therefore either upgrade the port when you upgrade your system, or if you are tracking -stable, upgrade the port when a new version becomes available. While cdrecord has many options, basic usage is even simpler than burncd. Burning an ISO 9660 image is done with: &prompt.root; cdrecord device imagefile.iso The tricky part of using cdrecord is finding the to use. To find the proper setting, use the flag of cdrecord, which might produce results like this: CDROMs burning &prompt.root; cdrecord Cdrecord 1.9 (i386-unknown-freebsd4.2) Copyright (C) 1995-2000 Jörg Schilling Using libscg version 'schily-0.1' scsibus0: 0,0,0 0) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST39236LW ' '0004' Disk 0,1,0 1) 'SEAGATE ' 'ST39173W ' '5958' Disk 0,2,0 2) * 0,3,0 3) 'iomega ' 'jaz 1GB ' 'J.86' Removable Disk 0,4,0 4) 'NEC ' 'CD-ROM DRIVE:466' '1.26' Removable CD-ROM 0,5,0 5) * 0,6,0 6) * 0,7,0 7) * scsibus1: 1,0,0 100) * 1,1,0 101) * 1,2,0 102) * 1,3,0 103) * 1,4,0 104) * 1,5,0 105) 'YAMAHA ' 'CRW4260 ' '1.0q' Removable CD-ROM 1,6,0 106) 'ARTEC ' 'AM12S ' '1.06' Scanner 1,7,0 107) * This lists the appropriate value for the devices on the list. Locate your CD burner, and use the three numbers separated by commas as the value for . In this case, the CRW device is 1,5,0, so the appropriate input would be =1,5,0. There are easier ways to specify this value; see &man.cdrecord.1; for details. That is also the place to look for information on writing audio tracks, controlling the speed, and other things.