Why is rufus not available under FreeBSD ?

[Clay Daniels]

Vlad, that's a nice little .sh script that shows several things new to me.
I normally use the gpart manpage examples and never thought about active,
bootcode, etc. I will keep this handy!

There is a something else to consider: Rufus is for USB only. That's fine
for .img bootable files, but there it no guarantee you can write a .iso
file to a USB stick and get it to work right. I know, I've done it many
times, with varying success. FreeBSD is good about providing .img & .iso
versions, but a lot of distros just give you an .iso, which is intended to
be put on a cd/dvd (*ISO* 9660).

Thanks for the script.
Clay

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 2:15 PM Vlad D. Markov via freebsd-questions <
freebsd-questions at freebsd.org> wrote:

> 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
>
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