Why is rufus not available under FreeBSD ?

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 01:54:28 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2020-01-28 22:17, Polytropon wrote:
> > On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:25:41 +0100, Evilham wrote:
> >> On dt., gen. 28 2020, Manish Jain wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi all,
> >>>
> >>> I had to update my BIOS a couple of days back, and for that I
> >>> needed a
> >>> bootable DOS USB pen drive. The only way to get this, I believe,
> >>> is
> >>> Rufus - which is Open Source and is available under Linux.
> >>>
> >>> sysutils/unetbootin should be able to do the job, but simply
> >>> does not work.
> >>>
> >>> I was wondering why Rufus is not available under FreeBSD. I
> >>> think it is
> >>> one of the most useful applications I have ever come across.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for any inputs.
> >>> Manish Jain
> >>
> >>
> >> This rufus?
> >>
> >> https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#do-you-plan-to-port-rufus-to-linuxmac-ossome-other-os
> >>
> >> I have used it on Windows at some point and yeah, it's handy; but
> >> the author makes a point of it being OSS but heavily dependent on
> >> Windows' APIs.
> >> So, I am really not aware of it being available for Linux either.
> > 
> > In this case, a documented procedure, or maybe a shellscript for
> > the ports collection would be a better solution than trying to
> > port something to FreeBSD that is heavily tied to "Windows" (it
> > probably won't work with wine, will it?). I know that it is
> > basically possible to create a filesystem image suitabe for
> > USB sticks that boots into DOS, as I have done this decades
> > ago. The assumption is: It worked decades ago, it should work
> > today. The reality is: Well... ;-)
> > 
> > You should not depend on complex solutions (and in this case,
> > only being available for a non-UNIX OS) in order to do something
> > that is, more or less, easy, and does _not require_ "Windows"
> > to be involved in any way. A native solution that works on
> > FreeBSD would be nice to have.
> > 
> > 
> 
> Hi Poly,
> 
> I fully agree. Perhaps we should our own command, something like:
> 
> mkdosbootdisk <device> [OPTIONS]

Exactly, or like mkisofs <options> -o <outfile> <infile(s)>, to
create a bootable image that can then be written to a USB stick
or an optical medium. I think this would involve some gpart (ex
fdisk), newfs_msdosfs, maybe copying files to a mdconfig-based
"filesystem in a file", and then dd or cdrecord / growisofs to
get it onto the actual target medium. At least I remember that
an approach like this worked decades ago. A convenient shell
script to incorporate all the parts would be nice to have.




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