Re: 12.4 disc 1 iso is really large

> On Dec 10, 2022, at 11:47 AM, Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> wrote:
> 
> On 10 December 2022 5:22:43 pm AEDT, Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de <mailto:freebsd@edvax.de>> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 9 Dec 2022 23:48:30 -0500, Kevin P. Neal wrote:
> 
>>> On Fri, Dec 09, 2022 at 05:04:52AM +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> 
>>>> On Thu, 8 Dec 2022 22:58:01 -0600
>>>> "Dan Mahoney (Ports)" <freebsd@gushi.org> wrote:
> 
>>>>> All,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I’m just noticing that the standard FreeBSD iso is some 959
>> megs:
>>>>> 
>> http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/12.4/FreeBSD-12.4-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso
>>>>> 
>>>>> Is there something in the release notes that basically implies
>> we no
>>>>> longer expect people to burn things to actual discs?
> 
>>>> 	You need a DVD - it's been some time since it fitted on a CD
>> <sigh>
>>>> I still remember doing installs from floppies.
> 
>>> So... what's the point of the "disc1" image that today requires a
>> DVD if
>>> there's also a "dvd" image made to be burned to a DVD?
> 
>> I've been asking this ("complaining about it") in the past.
>> As it seems, the regular 650 MB / 700 MG size of a CD can
>> no longer hold a FreeBSD installation... which is strange,
>> because if it would be possible to reduce the amount of
>> packages (!) on the disc, it would be suitable for use
> 
> Sorry, but there are no packages at all on disc1, or the equivalently sized memstick.  Only the dvd1 image has any packages, 932 in ~2.2GB 
> 
>> with CD media again, as it was in the past: The classic
>> "4 CDs approach" of older FreeBSD versions contained:
>> 
>> 	CD #1 with system installation and _some_ packages
>> 
>> 	CD #2 with a live system
>> 
>> 	CDs #3 and #4 with all other packages
>> 
>> So CD #1 could always be used to install a working OS, and
>> you could also install some packages (like X, Midnigh Commander,
>> joe, vim, and other useful stuff). For the ultimate selection
>> of packages, discs #3 and #4 would be used (if needed), ot
>> the installation could continue via Internet. However, a
>> complete offline installation was possible.
> 
> Indeed.  Trev Roydhouse used to mail me his hand-me-down 4 CD Walnut Creek sets; we had 2.0.5 (?), 2.2.6 which enabled the nimnet.asn.au <http://nimnet.asn.au/> server in '98, later 3.something, 4.5 ...
> 
> OTOH that was an AMD 586 140MHz box with 2GB RAM and a 4GB hdd, later 20GB, with CDR later CD-RW, with 1 dialout and 3 dialup modems.
> 
> Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
> 
> I've been working on retrieving the offline install possibility for months, and managed with some tricks and patches to get 'bsdconfig packages' working on the 12.3 dvd1 image to install X, KDE and some utilities, all offline - but it's considered a weird thing to want to do these days ... what "third world connectivity"?
> 
>> Strange thing: The "bootonly" and "minimal install" images
>> intended for use with USB media _could_ fit on a CD.
> 
> Still can, bootonly.iso is ~355MB, mini-memstick is ~360MB.
> 
> But full installers, even without any packages, really can't; everything has swollen that much.  Here are sizes >1MiB on (amd64) disc1:
> 
> 2      /bin
> 2      /etc
> 3      /var
> 8      /sbin
> 13    /lib
> 156  /boot
> 812  /usr
> 993  /
> 
> 3     /usr/libexec
> 19   /usr/sbin
> 20   /usr/lib
> 40   /usr/bin
> 127 /usr/share
> 605 /usr/freebsd-dist
> 812 /usr
> 
> /usr/freebsd-dist has, all as .txz:
> tests            13
> kernel         44
> ports           45
> lib32           62
> kernel-dbg 83
> src             171
> base          191
> total 605MB

I still rely on booting from CD on a regular basis.  There are USB cdroms in all my datacenters, and “burn an iso to disc” still feels way more useful to tell remote hands how to do than trying to explain how to image an iso onto a memory stick (which can vary based on formatting and OS).

Much as I love my idracs, at the day job we still have a number of older systems limping along doing Important Internet Things where that reinstall use-case matters.  (How I got them all upgraded to current versions of FreeBSD may be my BSDCan talk).

CDs are still the lowest common denominator.

Not all of the above freebsd-dist files are equal.  You need kernel and base to get a running system.  Everything else can be gotten later.

Ports basically requires an active internet connection to build anything — putting it on the disc is largely pointless.  Portsnap is in base.

Src is outdated as soon as it’s extracted in most cases, and user education as to “here’s how you get the source if you need it” would serve us better.

Kernel-dbg is also not the kind of thing most people are going to need without having net access, but I could see if being useful for doing things like bringing up new boards, lab systems, special configurations.

So — if we eliminated src, and just started teaching people that if you want to build things from src, you should get them from git, or the src.tar.xz on the ftp site, things would still fit easily for a while to come.

-Dan