How to create a FreeBSD 8.0 boot CD without boot.flp?

[Pierre-Luc Drouin]

So I just tested the CD and it works perfectly. It boots, automatically 
configure the interface and launches the SSH daemon. For me this is the 
perfect tool to perform remote installations/fixing of FreeBSD. I just 
send the compressed 100 MB ISO image to someone, have him to boot the 
machine using the CD and then I log on the machine with SSH and do 
whatever I want.

The only thing I had to do in addition to what I mentioned in my 
previous emails is to create a script in rc.d that runs just after root 
and that does the following:

mount /etc_tmp #Mount memory disk to /etc_tmp
cd /etc_tmp && tar -cp -C /etc -f - ./ | tar -xpf - #Copy content of 
/etc to /etc_tmp
mount /etc #nullfs mount /etc_tmp over /etc

Obviously I have also changed the root password and created a user that 
is a member of the wheel group.

Manolis Kiagias wrote:
> On 11/02/2010 12:08 π.μ., Pierre-Luc Drouin wrote:
>   
>> What I am trying to do is basically to install FreeBSD 8.0 on a CD. I
>> followed these instructions to install FreeBSD on a USB stick:
>>
>> http://typo.submonkey.net/articles/2006/04/13/installing-freebsd-on-usb-stick-episode-2
>>
>>
>> minus the fdisk/bsdlabel/newfs part . I just set up rc.conf to
>> configure the ethernet interface with DHCP and load sshd
>>
>> then I am now creating an iso image with the boot image. So at the
>> root of the CD I will have the boot directory containing the kernel
>> subdirectory.
>>
>> I figured out about the boot image error from mkisofs. I had to copy
>> cdboot into the actual boot directory for the image and the path
>> specified by the -b option is relative to the root directory of the CD...
>>
>> So should this work according to you?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>     
>
> It is going to be an interesting experiment. The official install
> CD/DVDs boot from boot/kernel on the CD but the root filesystem used is
> actually in an mfs (memory disk). Also it executes sysinstall instead of
> init at the end of the boot sequence. I suppose you can mount the root
> filesystem from CD as read-only but you will have to handle things like
> /var and /usr and you will probably need some writing capability. I am
> sure this can be done in more than a few ways though I've never
> researched this myself.
>