"nanobsd" prototype

[Bruce R. Montague]

* Those putting cut-down FreeBSD on CF systems and the like
might be interested in a brief summary of some available
scripts/systems put together by Sean Lazar, "FreeBSD on
Small Board Computers":

 http://www.thirdbreak.org/presentation/

Sean's with a group around here (www.thirdbreak.org/)
working with 802.11 community wireless on the soekris
systems.

They seem to really like wifibsd:

 http://www.thirdbreak.org/presentation/html/slide_9.html
 http://www.wifibsd.org/

>From Sean's demo, the wifi script seems to act pretty
much like the picobsd script, except it ends up building
a device image that has a normal FreeBSD system, with
user-selected files removed.  A number of pre-exisitng
"profiles" exist as starting points for your own CF, live
CD, or pxeboot system.

Sean analyzed 5 "sysgen scripts" as to resulting system
size and functionality and as to what he called "additive"
(it starts empty, you tell it what files/dirs to add) or
"subtractive" (you start with everything and tell it what
to take out).


* Incidently, a "WifiBSD Status Report" appears in the
FreeBSD "March-September 2003 Status Report":

 http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-mar-2003-sep-2003.html#WifiBSD-Status-Report
 http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-mar-2003-sep-2003.html

They appear to be targetting the "out-of-box access point",
but many of the issues are similar to nanobsd and similiar
systems. Some of their files containing lists of working
FreeBSD file subsets might be of interest to others...

  "Contact: Jon Disnard <masta at wifibsd.org>

  WifiBSD is a miniture version of FreeBSD for wireless
  applications. Originally for the Soekris Net45xx
  line of main-boards, but is now capable of being
  targeted to any hardware/architecture FreeBSD itself
  supports. Although not feature complete, WifiBSD is
  expected to be ready for 5.2-RELEASE. The design
  goal is to meet, or exceed, the functionality of
  commercial/consumer 802.11 wireless gear. Features
  that need attention (to name just a few) are: http
  interface, consol menu interface, and installation.
  Volunters are welcome."





 - bruce