Tar output mode for installworld
Tim Kientzle
kientzle at freebsd.org
Sun Jul 15 21:20:18 UTC 2007
Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> On Sat, 14.07.2007 at 23:28:05 -0700, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>
>> #%ntree
>> bin/echo uid=0 gid=0 group=wheel contents=my/bin/echo
>>
>> ... create a tarball with
>> tar -czf system.tgz @specification.ntree
>> or install directly from the specification file using
>> tar -xvpf specification.ntree -C ${DESTDIR}
>
> This would be the perfect basis on which to build a live/install release
> CD. You boot it up ... [do] the fdisk/bsdlabel/gmirror/zfs stuff ...
> [and] then kick of the install through tar.
>
> Simple and elegant. It would also do away with those base.aa, base.ab,
> etc. madness.
I'm confused. base.aa, etc, are a tar file, so I don't
entirely understand how this would be different? The
current installer does the equivalent of
cat base.* | tar -xf -
I can see one advantage and one disadvantage of installing
a specification file (which references other files) instead:
Plus: The specification file can re-use the existing
files on CD, so you don't have, e.g., one copy of /bin/sh
on the live CD and another buried in base.tgz. This
could save space.
Minus: Installing a specification file this way would
be slower because you then have to read a lot of small
files off of CD.
Or have I missed something?
Tim Kientzle
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