Howto's, Advice, Hints/Gotchas about livecd creation in FreeBSD

[Antonio Olivares]

Dear folks,

I would like to kindly ask you as the Subject Line tells it all.  I
believe I have done my homework, and I have tried out some competing
LiveCDs from *BSD like Bsdanywhere, jibbed(NetBSD), jggimi(OpenBSD),
had used RoFreeSBIE(FreeBSD based but unmaintained), Frenzy, Mahesha,
old FreeSBIE 2.0.1, ..., etc

I see some pages like mfsroot, and it is small custom made for ZFS and
other goodies :), I am not there yet :(, I see there are custom
scripts/SDK for livecd building:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/AvgLiveCD

http://livecd.sourceforge.net/

other pages and Frenzy Page:

http://frenzy.org.ua/en/

I got standard cd based on 8.1 Release i386 and I like it, but it got too big :(

What I am looking at.  I would like to create a small ~200MB cd like
old Frenzy with firefox and few apps to be able to copy2ram and take a
FreeBSD system anywhere(like I do with some linux livecds like Slax,
Porteus, PartedMagic, SystemRescueCD, Gparted, Clonezilla, etc).  It
would be nice to let people know that there is not just linux, I
showed some students where I work that there are other OSes beside
windows :)

Also, I would like to create a bigCD/LiveDVD with many things(not the
kitchen sink), with several apps I use for work, i.e, TeX/Latex (can
be TexLive2011 or teTeX from ports), maxima, gnuplot(dep for maxima),
ghostscript, ImageMagick, pdf utilities, compiler in case some apps
are needed, gkrellm/conky, like XFCE, but can use FluxBox, Blackbox,
other small Desktops or not use X if recommended.  CD/DVD should have
firefox, pf/ipfw firewall generic configuration, LibreOffice/(abiword
& gnumeric)/, mplayer & mencoder, ffmpeg, vorbis-tools, lame,
cdrecord/dvd+rw-tools/cdrdao, ..., etc.  This like RoFreeSBIE had, but
it died out unfortunately.  KDE is heavier desktop[PC-BSD has this],
Gnome too[There's GhostBSD].  If I can clone my current installation,
I would be very happy and take my desktop everywhere I can boot it.
If it is possible to put it on USB that would be also a great plus.

My friends advice me to follow the advice given in

http://wiki.freebsd.org/AvgLiveCD

and get my feet wet.  But I am not sure how to begin :(

Thank you all for your generous advice/suggestions/comments.

Regards,

Antonio