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List:       freebsd-hackers
Subject:    Converting a bootable USB stick in to bootable CD-ROM
From:       Peter Steele <psteele () maxiscale ! com>
Date:       2009-11-10 23:14:02
Message-ID: 7B9397B189EB6E46A5EE7B4C8A4BB7CB3394F75B () MBX03 ! exg5 ! exghost ! com
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I posted this on the -questions list but didn't get any replies. I have a FreeBSD \
image that I install on USB sticks to build new systems. When the stick boots it \
automatically clones itself on the system's hard drive, creating partitions and other \
configuration parameters that are programmed into the stick's cloning logic. I want \
to create a similar mechanism using a bootable CD-ROM. The biggest difference in the \
process of course is that the CD-ROM itself is read-only so clearly there needs to be \
an mfsroot involved in the process. I looked at how the FreeBSD Live CD is setup and \
the loader.conf file has these lines:



mfsroot_load="YES"

mfsroot_type="mfs_root"

mfsroot_name="/boot/mfsroot"



along with the file /boot/mfsroot.gz and no /etc/fstab. The fstab on my USB stick \
version has root mounted as /etc/da0s1a and clearly that isn't going to work. I \
changed my core BSD image accordingly, duplicating the mfsroot settings in my \
loader.conf.



I used the command below to create the iso file from the BSD image I prepared.



mkisofs -R -no-emul-boot -o /tmp/bsd.iso -b boot/cdboot  /bsd



When this iso is copied to a CD, it does boot. However, it doesn't seem to be picking \
up the mfsroot config and complains that the system is running from on a read-only \
file system, which of course is what I'm trying to avoid.



I assume I simply have the boot config setup wrong. I essentially want the same kind \
of thing that's done for BSD Live. Can anyone point me to the right info for setting \
up this kind of bootable BSD CD?



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