New vm-image size is much smaller than previos

[bob prohaska]

On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 07:39:00PM -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > On Fri, May 3, 2019, 7:42 PM bob prohaska <fbsd at www.zefox.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 11:06:15AM -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > > > -- Start of PGP signed section.
> > > > > On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 10:12:58AM -0700, Enji Cooper wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > On May 3, 2019, at 9:57 AM, Alan Somers <asomers at FreeBSD.org>
> > > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > See r346959.  Before first boot, you should expand the image up to
> > > > > > > whatever size you want.  growfs(8) will automatically expand the
> > > file
> > > > > > > system.
> > > > > > > -Alan
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 10:32 AM David Boyd <David.Boyd49 at twc.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> The vm-image for 13.0-CURRENT
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>         FreeBSD-13.0-CURRENT-amd64-20190503-r347033.vmdk
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> is only 4.0 GB in size.  Previous images were about 31.0 GB.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> This smaller image doesn't leave much room to add packages and
> > > other
> > > > > > >> customizations.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > This probably deserves a release note.
> > > > >
> > > > > It will certainly be mentioned in the 11.3 release notes.
> > > >
> > > > And those running head snapshots without reading commit messages
> > > > are likely to have lots of foot shooting.
> > > >
> > > > > Glen
> > > > --
> > > > Rod Grimes
> > > rgrimes at freebsd.org
> > >
> > > At the risk of being branded a wishful thinker, a firstboot script that
> > > asked the user for some configuration information would be a great help
> > > to both new and experienced foot-shooters. I'm thinking of Raspberry Pi,
> > > but perhaps it applies to non-embedded platforms also.
> > >
> > 
> > That's not a bad idea... we could press bsdinstall into service for that
> > perhaps... we already expand the partition / filesystem to match the media
> > size...
> 
> As asommers already pointed out a) we already do the for real media
> like on the rasberry pi's, etc all in that on first boot they do a
> growfs to fill the real media up with the file system.
> 

I misunderstood the significance of "vm-image", thinking it was
the same as a bootable microSD image. Apologies for the blunder.

My thoughts are about physical media. In that situation the default 
growfs on firstboot is a real handicap. It makes difficult any local 
customization of the microSD card, in particular adding a swap partition. 
A Pi2 is sort of usable without swap, a Pi3 is badly hampered with no swap. 

Having the existence of /firstboot trigger a configuration script 
that sets up swap, storage, accounts and network would be a great aid
to new users (and old users with imperfect memories). 

A man page for firstboot would be useful in any case. "What's that empty
file supposed to do?" is a very natural question. Unfortunately, by the
time the question is discovered it's too late to ask, and the user has
to start over. There are references to firstboot in man rc, but that's
a very hard way to answer a relatively simple question. Working around
/firstboot requires a serial console and considerable patience, at least
on a physical Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. 

Thanks for reading,  

bob prohaska