Curt Sampson wrote:
> This may be a bit misleading. In the i386 directory, for example, we
> have the full distribution as a single .tar.gz file for each section
> under the Tarfiles directory, and the whole thing again as split-up
> files under other directories. There's obviously no need to include more
> than one of these on the CD. (My vote would be for the large tarfiles
> myself, since I find those much easier to deal with, but I don't know if
> the installation software works with them because I generally unpack the
> files myself.)

 I have thought on this issue as well.  My problem is, that I want to
change as little as possible, if not nothing, on the official distribution
set.  Only this way the NetBSD-community altogether can support the
distribution if there are problems installing, using or re-distributing the
contents of the CD w/o actually knowing what's on the CD by simply assuming
the content is 100% the original distribution.

 Seeing it your way, you could even unpack all tar-archives.  Then the user
is able to install NetBSD or even use it by simply copying the required
tree. This way I could save the user unpacking tar and gzipped archives.

 But then I have altered the distribution and must take the responsability
for it myself. This wont help me or the NetBSD-community.

 The other thing is, that a CD is perfect for BBS-use this way.  Let that
be BBS or ftp-server, just mount the CD and there you go (even though one
might think, it will be better to copy the CD onto hard drive, because
CD-ROM drives tend to be slow and costy).

 I for myself don't see a reason to alter the original set by reducing the
redundancy, but by enhancing it.

> So this leaves you about 165 MB of space, which is plenty for a single
> bootable system. You might possibly be able to pack two bootable systems
> in that sort of space, though I don't know if I'd want to try it, or if
> it would even be possible to make a CD that would boot the appropriate
> version of NetBSD on both, say, an Amiga and a Sparc.

 I am not sure how to acomplish this task - two bootable systems on one CD
using one session.  I take it that the Sparc port is able to boot of CD-ROM
as well?  How would you give the option to boot from a second session on
the CD?

> However, since you have the possibility of two disks, you could make one
> boot one architecture, and another boot another architecture, and load
> up the remainder of the second disk with X and utilities and all that
> stuff.

 This what I want to do :-)

> While you're at it, why not drop obj symlinks in all of the source
> directories pointing to /usr/obj, so that someone who doesn't want to
> use a union filesystem can still do a compile from the CD?

 I am not sure if I understand you. You want me to do:

 cd /mnt/futurecdrom/usr/src/usr.bin/yes/
 ln -s /usr/obj obj

 ?

> I'll probably buy a copy or two of whatever you put out, just to support
> the project, and make sure that I've got something to drag to a friend's
> place should he want NetBSD installed. (I don't buy CD-ROMs much
> anymore; when you're sitting at the end of a T1 it's easier just to
> download another copy from the Internet than it is to go into the other
> room where the computer is and put in a disc.)

 You are perfectly right.  I have a leased line myself, and start to fetch
material from the net myself, rather than buying a CD.  But this is europe,
and we don't have T1 lines for a few bucks a month, we have analog modems
and few ISDN freaks.  So distributing a CD-ROM with NetBSD is still worth a
thing. 

 Oh, btw:  We're speaking of a 1000, maybe 2000 CDs.  The price will be
somewhere around 22DM (that is about 14$US).  This is a price at a level
where most people will think:  "Oh, nice price.  I get it, even if not
worth the content, money's not really lost".

-- 
Markus Illenseer