How to create a livecd without compiling everything.

[Josh Paetzel]

On Apr 20, 2009, at 1:23 AM, Peter Wang wrote:

>
> Hi, all.
>
> I want to create a customized freebsd livecd, and i have read quite a
> lot guides about how to do that. but the problem is: most of these
> need make buildworld, make buildkernel ... I think it's hard for my
> notebook do that. so is there a simpler/quicker way in which i can
> create a livecd, what i want to be included in the livecd are the base
> freebsd system plus some customized packages/config files.


In order to create a livecd you need to run mkisofs somewhere that has  
a complete copy of FreeBSD.  There are two options for this, one being  
running it against the live install of your system (ala /) and the  
other option is populating a stage directory.  Most guides assume that  
the easiest way to do this is via the DESTDIR=/mystagedir option of  
make installworld installkernel distribution, and it probably is the  
easiest way, assuming you have done make buildworld buildkernel

In your case where this is an undesirable option you can do one of a  
few things.

1) Use the live system to build the stage directory...

# mkdir /usr/mystage ; ( cd / ; tar --exclude /usr/mystage -cf - .) |  
( cd /usrr/mystage -xf - )

2) copy over /usr/src and /usr/obj from a faster machine that's run  
make buildworld buildkernel and then use make installworld  
intallkernel distribution to build the stage dir

3) Use your live system directly to run mkisofs

Thanks,

Josh Paetzel