Proposal for making raspberry pi and similar systems easier to install

[Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost>]

Having just hooked up my pi, and installed the latest 6.99.17 image on it, I'd
now like the system to be generally useable.  I propose the following to make
it easier to install:

1) We provide a simple miniroot image, with an INSTALL kernel that contains
sysinst, dhcp, and sshd.  The miniroot image would be formatted similarly to
the current rpi.img file, where the user just dd's it to an sd card.

2) The image boots into a ramdisk.  It has a user "sysinst" with uid 0, whose
default shell is sysinst.  Default password would be something simple like
"netbsd".

How would it work for the user?

1) User dd's the image, plugs the sd card and network cable in.  Machine boots
up, grabs a dhcp address, fires up sshd and sits there.

2) If the user has a keyboard/monitor, they login as sysinst, and begin a
normal install.

3) if not, they ssh in as sysinst, and begin a normal install.

The installer simply needs to resize the ffs partition on the drive, and newfs
it, and then begin normal sysinst-y stuff.

I also think this scheme could be easily used for other embedded devices of
similar nature.

---
Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/