On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Jeremy C. Reed enslaved 16 hundred monkeys to type:

> As far as I know, there aren't any howtos on building a custom CD for
> NetBSD. I started writing a guide for this, but it was based on 1.5.x and
> things have changed in 1.6.

Would be interesting to read!

> I have customized sysinst a few times (for example, for auto-defaults for
> unattended installs) and have built my own custom CDs many times with my
> own packages (including live, memory-based CDs).
>
> See http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/bootcd.html for the Bootable CD
> ROM How-To.

Thanks, from what I understand I just copy the current-i386 installation
files (118mb again I think so that's not bad) and then I can make it all
into an ISO. I can just copy my already-burned iso onto the /cdsources as
well. In fact, looking at the sets, would it be terrible if I just stuck
in there compiled version of bash and pico, stuff like that and retarred
it up as base.tgz? I know the /var/db/pkg stuff would be a bit screwy when
I come to pkg_install (I don't really understand the db thing anyway)...

Another thing I see is, couldn't I just tar up my compiled kernel which is
(very) specific for this system and add it as KERN-LITE.tgz in the sets?
Would I have to add it in "kernel" as well?

Is there any other way to install pksrc apart from adding it as a modified
set but untarring it into /usr then retarring so the root directory for
the set is /usr/pkgsrc instead of /pkgsrc? Actually, it doesn't really
matter, but would I be able to rename the pkgsrc.tar.gz pkgsrc.tgz and
stick it in sets to be extracted automatically? Is this just *too*
disgusting to do? I'm new to all this if you hadn't noticed already ;)

Another question, there is a user-ppp project from
speedtouch.sourceforge.net, again, would I just add the compiled binary
into base and add a ppp.conf in a ppp directory for etc?

Maybe a better way is to make another set called "poff" or whatever and
include in that set pkgsrc, syssrc, compiled binaries for ppp, maybe some
binaries for pico and bash (again I'm unclear about the best way to
auto-add packages) and then just select it during the installation?? I
would add a /etc/ppp directory in it too.

One more thing. I downloaded the 1.6 iso a month or so ago - since then
the x source has been updated with a patch for my video driver. What I
*did* have to do was install netbsd from my iso without x, then compile x
from the x sources which took a LONG time. How can I find out if the iso
has been updated, and if it contains the latest x binaries? I guess the
new x src is in netbsd-current, and that netbsd-release-1.6 doesn't get
changed from ... release?

As you can see lots of questions! I think if I can understand the above a
little better I can wait a while before I ask a whole bunch more...

> Look at the code (mostly the Makefiles) under src/distrib/utils/sysinst/,
> src/distrib/i386/floppies/ (assuming i386), and the src/etc/Makefile
> (about building ISO).

I will have a look, but I'm no genius, and will see if there's anything
useful I can mess about with. I guess I'd have to build into my /cdsources
from the src?

> Any easy way would by just to build own cdsources/ directory (like
> described in the Bootable CD ROM HOWTO) that also includes the packages
> you want in the packages/1.6/i386/All/ directory. Then manually install as
> normal.

As above, do you mean just add bash-xxx.tgz as a file and once installed
run pkg_install bash like that? I'd kinda like it integrated...

Thanks,

Poff

poff@sixbit.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org