Paring down a FreeBSD system for flash drive use ?

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <1087357223.35868.4.camel at wstaylorm.dand06.au.bytecraft.au.com>
            Murray Taylor <murraytaylor at bytecraftsystems.com> writes:
: On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 12:09, Chad R. Larson wrote:
: > On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 09:04:28PM -0700, Joe Schmoe wrote:
: > > 
: > > Murray Taylor <murraytaylor at bytecraftsystems.com> wrote: 
: > > Google for minibsd
: > > 
: > > http://neon1.net/misc/minibsd.html
: > > 
: > > I have used miniBSD as a firewall box on an Advantech WEB-2143
: > > quite successfully
: > 
: > Another thing to consider is that the FreeBSD 4.x kernel is quite a
: > bit bigger than in the old days.  Bloat seems like entropy,
: > inevitable without constant care.  Since most embedded systems are
: > not going to need SMP, nor the advanced virtual memory systems (no
: > disk--no swap), you might rather build your system starting with
: > perhaps a 2.2.8 system.
: > 
: > 	-crl
: 
: FWIW
: Im using FreeBSD 4.7 in a 32MB Compact Flash card ...
: 
: df -h  says I'm using 47% of the CF card...

Bah!  I've made 4.5 bootable CF's using only 9MB of my 16MB flash...
47% of 32 is 15MB :-).  Of course that's w/o X.  The 3.4 based system
was only about 1MB smaller.

I do it by not trusting installworld.  It installs way too much, so
instead, I have a list of directories to install and a glue script.
I'm currently adapting things to 5.x and hope to make it less TSC
specific.

Warner