Mason Loring Bliss writes:
> Hi, all.
> 
> I think it would be neat to have ISO images for bootable CDs available on
> our ftp site. If we can do this, I'll take a stab at putting together the
> actual image, bootable on i386 but with binaries for at least a couple
> different architectures, depending on what will fit. (i386, mac68k, sparc,
> and alpha would seem to be the popular choices.)
> 
> It would be cool if this was an "official" part of our releases. Lots of
> people want this, and it'll help get NetBSD into wider circulation.
> 
> Thoughts?

This could be easily done via a script on ftp.netbsd.org, or somewhere
like that.  A simple invocation of 'mkhybrid' with the Right(TM) options
would create a nicely bootable ISO image.  Perhaps a cross-compiled 
installboot for alpha could be used to make the image bootable for that
platform also.  Sparc would be trickier because it needs a disklabel at
the very beginning of the CD, and a FFS partition in addition to the
ISO9660.  I don't know about any of the other platforms NetBSD supports.

> PS: If it's possible to do bootable CDs for multiple platforms, or for
> different individual platforms, I'd think those would be worthwhile as
> well. Unfortunately, the only machine I have personally for testing that
> can usefully boot from a CD under NetBSD right now is i386, so that's the
> only one I can test myself. <shrug>

I have i386, sparc, mac68k, alpha, next68k, and vax.  In theory they could
all be bootable from a CD, though I am not completely sure about next68k
and vax.  (whether the firmware supports it)  Older i386 machines certainly
can't boot, though I not sure about older Macs.

This would be a very nice feature.  I would prefer to see individual
ISO images by platform though, in addition to the "overall" CD image.
This would be nice so someone doesn't need to download 640MB when all
they want is the <100MB they would need for one arch, and source.

-Andrew
-- 
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Andrew Gillham                            | This space left blank
gillham@whirlpool.com                     | inadvertently.
I speak for myself, not for my employer.  | Contact the publisher.