FreeBSD EABI ARM & Network boot image howto?

[John Nicholls]

On Sun, 2010-08-15 at 08:53 -0600, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> In message: <1281869630.24339.63.camel at xeon.thinmesh.com>
>             John Nicholls <john at thinlinx.com> writes:
> : Special thanks to Yohanes Nugroho & Greg Ansley for the fantastic work
> : they have done with the FreeBSD port to the AT91SAM9G20. Great to see
> : FreeBSD gaining more traction in the embedded World :)
> : 
> : I have a couple of questions,
> : 
> : (1) I noticed a significant performance boost under Linux when Linux ARM
> : moved to EABI, are there any plans for a EABI FreeBSD version?
> : 
> : http://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort
> 
> People have talked about it, but so far nothing concrete has been
> done, to my knowledge.

OK, that's a pity...

> : (2) I can build a Linux image which contains the Kernel and a root file
> : system in one file which is great for network booting, can I do
> : something similar with FreeBSD?
> 
> Yes.  You can add MD_ROOT and MD_ROOT_SIZE to your kernel config
> file.  MD_ROOT_SIZE sets the size of the ram disk.  You can build an
> image from a directory tree using makefs.  You can use
> sys/tools/embed_mfs.sh into the image.
> 
> Much of this can be automated with the MFS_IMAGE makeoption on arm.

Thanks for this Warner, is there any documentation such as a HOWTO
somewhere?

I want to create something similar to our Linux image which we have
shrunk to about 8MB including the Linux Kernel, Xserver and Rdesktop. I
have found NanoBSD, mfsBSD and miniBSD which look like good starting
points also for small images

John


> Warner