Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 23:58:10 -0400 (EDT) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: colinj@cs.unm.edu (Colin Eric Johnson) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: CD Images and Bootable CDs Message-ID: <199905140358.XAA14331@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.05.9905131720230.171281-100000@waimea.cs.unm.edu> from Colin Eric Johnson at "May 13, 99 05:35:03 pm"
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Colin Eric Johnson wrote, > > I have a couple of questions about CD Images for FreeBSD and making > bootable CDs. > > I'm interested in knowing if there are available copies of the images that > are used to make the CDs that Walnut Creek ships. I do realize that Walnut > Creek is a business. I work for the dept. of Computer Science hear at UNM > and would like to be able to give students the option of writing CDs for > FreeBSD (since they can get them for about $1.00/per disk). I realize that > I can purchase the CDs and make images myself, and I am also willing to do > this unless that would be out of line. You should not make exact copies of the Walnut Creek CDs. There is the issue of compilation copyright, but also, some of the copyright holders for packages and ports have special agreements with Walnut Creek allowing distribution only by Walnut Creek. That said, I have made FreeBSD CDROMs for my own use. Go to a FreeBSD ftp site that supports downloading an entire directory tree has a tar file and grab the basic OS (this is freely redistributable). Do the same for XFree86 if desired. Assemble some must-have ports and packages. Untar it all some place where you have the space, assemble the heirarchies properly (e.g. kill syslinks to XFree86 in the FreeBSD dist and put in the real thing), build your ISO image, and then burn that bootable CD. I've done it. Works great. > Ok, that was question number one. > > Question number two. > > I'd like to be able to make a CD image of the root partition on a FreeBSD > box such that it is a bootable CD so that if the disk were damaged, > corrupted or comprimised I could boot the machine with known safe media. > I've been looking at the tools like mkhybrid and mkisofs mkisofs should be fine. No need for Joliet extensions for a FreeBSD system disk. > to produce CD > images from directories, what I am not sure about is what to use for the > bootable image. What I would like is something with a bit more space then > a boot floppy. I'm thinking that with a bootable CD with a root file > system on it I could have enough tools to bring a machine on line. > > thoughts? You can easily fit the root partition and the basic usr on a CD. Using one for a fixit or boot disk seems perfectly reasonable... to a point. You will not have a writable /tmp, but that is not a show stopper. However, I'm not at all sure how mounting other filesystems would work on a read-only directory on a CD. If you could not mount other filesystems, it would be pretty much useless. You could boot fine and run commands, but never be able to actually fix anything. -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199905140358.XAA14331>