From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 5 20:05:02 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 532FF3EE for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2014 20:05:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bigwig.baldwin.cx (bigwig.baldwin.cx [IPv6:2001:470:1f11:75::1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2E0CA84D for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2014 20:05:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from jhbbsd.localnet (unknown [209.249.190.124]) by bigwig.baldwin.cx (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 421BAB946; Wed, 5 Mar 2014 15:05:01 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, tyler@tysdomain.com Subject: Re: getting involved and contributing Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 14:51:45 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.5 (FreeBSD/8.4-CBSD-20130906; KDE/4.5.5; amd64; ; ) References: <53176FB4.1080908@tysdomain.com> In-Reply-To: <53176FB4.1080908@tysdomain.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201403051451.45358.jhb@freebsd.org> X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (bigwig.baldwin.cx); Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:05:01 -0500 (EST) X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:05:02 -0000 On Wednesday, March 05, 2014 1:40:52 pm Littlefield, Tyler wrote: > Hello all: > I had a fewe questions I wanted to ask. > I'm looking for areas in which I might contribute code (c/c++, Python > etc). As I'm new to the code contribution deal, I'd like to start off > with something small if possible. My interests are mainly in security > and systems development, though I'm probably not all that great at > either. Similarly, I had a few questions: > 1) what is a free or cheap method for testing code, branches etc? I have > two systems here, but I am unable to duel boot. > 2) I could use VMWare for testing, but that limits my ability to do much > testing. Given that though, is there a way to automate the install of > BSD? Basically: I am blind and am unable to install BSD by myself > without help. Solutions exist for serial ports, but I've not really had > much great luck connecting to that through a host. If there's a solution > for a scripted install, that would be awesome. If you have a new enough machine running FreeBSD you can use bhyve (or perhaps VirtualBox) as a hypervisor and do testing inside guests. (I do this on my laptop now.) As far as scripted installs: you can write your own install script. The ZFSOnRoot wiki pages actually have a decent set of steps one needs to do a manual install. You can use that as a basis for writing your own install script that uses gpart to layout a disk image file, mounts it via mdconfig and then untars the dists into the image. -- John Baldwin