Creating a mini install disk, for particular needs

[David Adam]

On Wed, 11 May 2005, Chris Phillips wrote:
> We need a fairly painless way, to roll out a fresh install onto some
> random i386 hardware we have lying around (there's a plentiful supply),
> for any new users, who require a basic functioning GUI, with access to
> graphical email client, web browser & 'rdesktop' (for the windows
> applications, that they are all hooked on).
>
> What I'd love to be able to do, is to create a FreeBSD (it's my
> favorite) CD, that contains all that I need for these basic systems.
> Either, set up so that the install is automated, with just the minimal
> of setup, or so that it's got all the packages that I want & can all be
> installed straight off the CD (perhaps by choosing the "All Packages"
> option).

> Is what I've described actually possible?
>
> Would anyone be willing or able, to guide me toward a good resource that
> I can get reading?
>
> It would be very cool, if I could do this for our company.  More bums on
> seats, for FreeBSD :)

Chris,

If you do want install CD (the other posters so far have looked at
thin-client stuff), you might want to check out FreeSBIE and its
customisation scripts. It's very straightforward to build a custom CD
with things like RDesktop, and comes with a built-in installer (although
it does require some extra work to get things like the source and ports
trees).

www.freesbie.org

Cheers,

David Adam
zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au