Paring down a FreeBSD system for flash drive use ?

[Bruce R. Montague]

Hi, re:

 > I thought there was some kind of elegant mechanism
 > where you could edit make.conf or something, ...


Another thing that you might have in mind here is
the "/etc/defaults/make.conf" file that has:   

 To avoid building various parts of the base system:
#NO_CVS=        true    # do not build CVS
#NO_BIND=       true    # do not build BIND
#NO_FORTRAN=    true    # do not build g77 and related libraries
#NO_I4B=        true    # do not build isdn4bsd package
#NO_IPFILTER=   true    # do not build IP Filter package
#NO_LPR=        true    # do not build lpr and related programs
#NO_MAILWRAPPER=true    # do not build the mailwrapper(8) MTA selector
#NO_MODULES=    true    # do not build modules with the kernel
#NO_OBJC=       true    # do not build Objective C support
#NO_OPENSSH=    true    # do not build OpenSSH
#NO_OPENSSL=    true    # do not build OpenSSL (implies NO_OPENSSH)
#NO_SENDMAIL=   true    # do not build sendmail and related programs
#NO_SHAREDOCS=  true    # do not build the 4.4BSD legacy docs
#NO_TCSH=       true    # do not build and install /bin/csh (which is tcsh)
#NO_X=          true    # do not compile in XWindows support (e.g. doscmd)
#NOCRYPT=       true    # do not build any crypto code
#NOGAMES=       true    # do not build games (games/ subdir)
#NOINFO=        true    # do not make or install info files
#NOLIBC_R=      true    # do not build libc_r (re-entrant version of libc)
#NOMAN=         true    # do not build manual pages
#NOPERL=        true    # do not build perl. Disables OpenSSL optimizations
#NOPROFILE=     true    # Avoid compiling profiled libraries
#NOSECURE=      true    # do not build crypto code in secure/ subdir
#NOSHARE=       true    # do not go into the share subdir
#NOUUCP=        true    # do not build uucp related programs


 - bruce