Re: bsdinstall no longer uses BSDINSTALL_DISTDIR?

Hi.

Temat: bsdinstall no longer uses BSDINSTALL_DISTDIR?
Data: 2026-04-25 0:10
Nadawca: "Rick Macklem" <rick.macklem@gmail.com>
Adresat: "FreeBSD CURRENT" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>; 

> (...)
> I don't know if this is a bug or feature, but bsdinstall no longer
> seems to recognize BSDINSTALL_DISTDIR and tries to download
> the tarballs, even when this is set.
> 
> This is a bother for snapshots, since the tarballs get replaced
> frequently and, for jails, I want the install in the jail to be the
> same as the parent system.
> 
> rick

Recently I needed to build FreeBSD VM images from custom
source tree ... I tried 'release.sh' from /usr/src/release ... but
it disappointed me a lot. Then I started to create my own
verimg(8) solution and one of the steps was unattended way
of using bsdinstall(8) to 'bootstrap' a PKGBASE FreeBSD
system ... while it worked in 'kinda' way it was not flexible
and installed PKGBASE sets that I did not wanted when used
in unattended way.

There is also poudriere-image(8) but it has other issues.

This is where verimg(8) strength is. You can fetch the source
and build FreeBSD and then 'populate' it into a VM image or
just a /mnt dir on a bare metal host ... both are supported.

... and You can just fetch the source yourself then build the
FreeBSD 'userland' and 'kernel' by hand and tell verimg(8)
to just 'populate' (or bootstrap) new PKGBASE FreeBSD
system into new /mnt (or different place) or in a VM image.

Details:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/04/15/freebsd-image-builder-installer-verimg-tool/
- https://github.com/vermaden/verimg

Regards,
vermaden