I agree - my vote is for ISO images. It really does save a lot of headache
around here where I work; we just plop system images on CDs and ship them
around all the time. I could deal with a CD-making script, but hey, the less
work I have to do, the better. :)

One anecdotal example -- a friend asked me for help installing RedHat Linux
6.0 on his non-networked box the other day. a FTP/NFS install would be a
pain, obviously, so I just made a CD for him. I spent 1 hour downloading the
image (okay, so I have a fast connection), 30 minutes burning it at 2x
speed, and 40 minutes for the install. If I had to make a disk image from
scratch, that would have taken a lot longer than 1 hour for the download,
IMHO. Not to mention that if I didn't have NetBSD on a box someplace already
(what if all I have is Windows and some cheesy CD-Writer program, and one
day I'm surfing and find www.netbsd.org?), the disk creation script is kind
of useless for me.

If I could do the same thing for NetBSD I would have probably encouraged him
to try NetBSD out instead, but I don't have NetBSD CDs around -- I've always
installed off the network. The ISO image with all the RPMs on it already
pre-built was a real lifesaver.

If disk space on ftp.netbsd.org is an issue -- let me know where to send a
big hard drive for inclusion into the server. They're cheap, and I'd hate to
see this idea tabled for a lack of space. I'm sure that even a small number
of cash donations would be more than enough to solve that problem.

-Edwin

-----Original Message-----
From: Soren S. Jorvang [mailto:soren@t.dk]
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 1999 9:20 AM
To: Michael G. Schabert
Cc: current-users@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: ISO images for the FTP site?


On Tue, Jun 29, 1999 at 02:09:36PM -0400, Michael G. Schabert wrote:
> People are thinking of how much easier this'll make it to make NetBSD
> CDROMs. It shouldn't be too difficult to use the cdhdtape with the distrib
> sets to accomplish the same thing...or as I mentioned mke a package out of
> Bob's scripts...actually, it'd probably be best to make a directory in the
> packages tree, with a package for each of the CDROM'able archs as well as
1
> package for the hybrid catch-all CDROMs. With those, there would be almost
> NO extra disk space needed on ftp.netbsd.org since the package/scripts can
> still be getting the files from the distrib sets.

I am all for a CD-creating package as well, but having a raw CD image
available would make it a lot easier for people who do not already have
NetBSD running and people who would have a hard time running mkisofs
on their funky all-non-Unix systems, and it removes the risk of error
when putting the distribution files into the staging area.

For many people, CD-R access is still awkard, i.e. though work/university
only where a raw file is easier to just plunk onto a blank.

It just makes getting NetBSD a whole lot easier for a number of people.


-- 
Soren