What's our standard "stripped-down FreeBSD" tool?

[Eduardo Meyer]

On 7/24/07, Michael W. Lucas <mwlucas at blackhelicopters.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Been researching building stripped-down versions of FreBSD for flash
> drives and suchforth.  It seems that we have three big contenders in
> this area:
>
> Freesbie
> NanoBSD
> TinyBSD
>
> Are any of these particularly stronger than the other?  If I was to
> start over, or recommend one to someone else, which would be the best
> these days?
>
> Thanks,
> ==ml
>
> --
> Michael W. Lucas        mwlucas at BlackHelicopters.org, mwlucas at FreeBSD.org
>                 http://www.BlackHelicopters.org/~mwlucas/
>       Coming Soon: "Absolute FreeBSD" -- http://www.AbsoluteFreeBSD.com
> On 5/4/2007, the TSA kept 3 pairs of my soiled undies "for security reasons."

I have been using all mentioned options, plus, minibsd. Honestly, I
would recommend anyone to use TinyBSD, as long as:

- You dont need to do cross building;
- You can read a few instructions on a help screen or interactively
answer some questions;

This is what I mention because TinyBSD wont do cross building because
it does not compile the whome world. Instead, it copies the already
compiled and in production ones. Also because tinyBSD have a good
README file, not no man page nor sgmlized docs.

I know people are addressing those issues, regarding SGML doc, but it
does not exist right now. The first issue is also getting addressed on
the -CURRENT version of TinyBSD (cvs only, maybe on the website too -
tinybsd.org), but it is not ready. According to patrick tracanelli
TinyBSD  will heavily be addressed to build ARM systems. And to do so,
cross building is a must be. However, it is not present right now.

I have added TinyBSD to flash discs, to CF cards, to memory sticks and
also on optical drives. On CD/DVD it is just a matter of building an
ISO with mkisofs and adding one extra line on kernel conf file. No
"special magic" that requires using a whole other framework.

I can also choose if I want tinyBSD to act as a live system, depending
on the booted media, or if I want it to work as MFS system, which will
never access the media once it is booted. It is specially good on
memory sticks. It is a feature Julian Elischer contributed, if I
remember the commit message correctly.

TinyBSD also have pre-defined config files ready to build, just like
picobsd used to. If you aim to make a FreeBSD system aimed for
PCEngine's WRAP for example, you will save yourself a LOT of work and
study on why NanoBSD, FreesBIE or anything else wont work on Wrap, and
do the necessary changes, while TinyBSD has a ready-to-go predefined
conf, so you will only spend your time on customization of the system.
Not studying how to make it, at least, boot.

So, my personal experiences are favorable to this tinybsd thing. Give it a try.

BTW, its minimal image is 14MB. My usable ones are 21MB sized, in the average.




-- 
===========
Eduardo Meyer
pessoal: dudu.meyer at gmail.com
profissional: ddm.farmaciap at saude.gov.br