Why is rufus not available under FreeBSD ?

[Vlad D. Markov]

On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 04:37:20 +0100
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
For some reason I wanted a bootable dos usb in the distant past. I found this on my computer:

#!/bin/sh

# empty the disk of all data
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1m count=2

# Create a master boot record on the disk
gpart create -s MBR da0

# add a 64MB slice (partition) of a type
gpart add -s 64m -t \!6 da0      #fat16
#gpart add -s 64m -t \!12 da0   #fat32

# set the first slice (partitiion) active on dev da0
gpart set -a active -i 1 da0

# place the bootcode in the MBR
gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr da0

# make file system nd install bootstrap code
newfs_msdos -B /home/vlad/mkDos/bootsect -o 63 /dev/da0s1
#newfs_msdos -F 32 -c 1 -S 512 -C 34089472  -B /home/vlad/mkDos/bootsect -o 63 /dev/da0s1

mount_msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mnt
cd /mnt && touch IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS COMMAND.COM
cp /home/vlad/mkDos/dosFiles/* /mnt

umount /mnt