7.3-BETA1 Available... [memstick.img?]

[Ken Smith]

On Sat, 2010-01-30 at 17:17 +1100, Ian Smith wrote:

> are there any plans afoot to release memstick.img/s for 7.3-R?
> 
> If so, where should I look for information on how it may be done?
> 
> If not, is there something about RELENG_7 precluding that?  USB stack?

No, no plans afoot for memsticks for the balance of the 7.X releases.
The sysinstall support for installing from a USB based disk didn't get
MFCed to stable/7.  Even if it was we're already something of a
heavyweight on images (both CDs-with-packages and DVD) so my plan all
along had been to phase in the memstick image for stable/8 and at the
same time drop CDs-with-packages.

> My search for information on the particular recipe/s used to make the 
> 8.0-R memstick images has proven fruitless so far, despite several 
> useful suggestions on ways to make various other sorts of bootable USB 
> stick images.  So far they seem to have been made out-of-band, somehow?
> 
> My particular interest is in putting DVD release/s onto a 4GB(+) stick, 
> hopefully on bootable slices rather than 'dangerously dedicated' form.

I was more or less experimenting with the memsticks for 8.0 and never
quite got around to packaging up what I do into a script.  I'll try to
get something along those lines into the tree some time soon.  Release
builds are done in two passes - the first pass creates all the
directories needed but stops there giving me a chance to add stuff to
those directories.  That's where I put the packages into place if there
are going to be any.  After doing that the second pass runs which builds
the ISO images.  After the first pass I briefly put the packages
directory that is supposed to be on disc1 (which is just the docs
packages, sysinstall gets grumpy if those aren't present) into the dvd1
directory and do this:

  makefs foo.fs dvd1
  dd if=/dev/zero of=8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img \
	bs=10240 count=<size>
  mdconfig -a -t vnode -f 8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img
  fdisk -BIq /dev/md0
  bsdlabel -B -w /dev/md0
  dd if=foo.fs of=/dev/md0a bs=10240 conv=sync
  mdconfig -d -u 0

The <size> number should be calculated to be two blocks larger than the
size of foo.fs so you've got room for round-up error and enough space
for the label.

After doing that I put the packages directory I'd used where it's
supposed to be (disc1), put the proper set of packages for the DVD into
the dvd1 directory, and then run the second pass of the release build to
generate the ISO images.

-- 
                                                Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |

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