Installation image size for CD exceeds media size

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 15:46:53 +0100, Tomasz CEDRO wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 10:39 PM Polytropon wrote:
> > Or what is that image supposed to be used for?
> 
> I just guess this may be used on SMALL / MINI DVD+RW disks used in
> camcorders, or small "business card" disk, they have around
> 1.25..1.5GB capacity, I used them quite often because they are pretty
> reliable (can live several years when carried everyday in a backpack),
> smaller in size, rewritable (can use up-to-date contents when it shows
> up on the same disk), and twice capacity of CeDeROM disks..

Never saw those in reality here... :-)



> thus the
> name "disc1" not "cdrom1" I guess..?

No, historically, they were named "discN" for CDs, "bootonly" for
CDs that would only boot, but would not contain lots of packages,
and "memstick" for USB media. This of course was when CDs were the
typical examples for optical media; "dvdN" was added later when
DVDs became widely available. Live system capabilities were moved
into the default content, and therefore usable from USB and DVD.

For comparison, from historical context:

http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/

The CDs - "disc1":

FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 608919552
FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso	 671152128

Both fit a 650MB / 700MB medium.

The DVDs - "dvd1":

FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso	 1658320896
FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso	 1801652224

And a timeline / "sizeline":

FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 608919552
FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 615966720
FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 645224448
FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 647389184
FreeBSD-10.4-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 569620480
FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 601817088
FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 618297344
FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 618297344
FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso	 758073344
FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso      763678720

The trend is the same for amd64 - since 12.0, the images cannot be
used with CDs anymore. I simply cannot imagine that this is a problem
of the OS getting "too big", but rather too many additional packages
on the CD. Wouldn't it be possible to omit some packages to get the
size down to ca. 650MB so you can use CDs again, which was possible
for decades? I don't have to check for older releases because I _know_
that I recorded them to ordinary CDs when they were released.



Well... I went with a DVD installation now, worked as expected.


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...