On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 20:45:53 +0100 (CET), Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de> wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Andy Ruhl wrote:
> > Cool, I'll get into netbsd-announce. Once the announcement is made,
> > time to start building some userlands and get working on a new cobalt
> > restore CD. Can't guarantee that I'm smart enough to make one, but
> > I'll see what I can do.
> 
> Maybe you want to coordinate this with Dennis Chernoivanov
> (cdi@NetBSD.org). I think he wanted to do something in that area too, and
> if you can e.g. come up with a "restore-CD" package for pkgsrc, that would
> be very cool. (I talked to Dennis about this at EuroBSDCon, and it's
> probably not likely to get such a restore CD built from /usr/src).

I never talked to Dennis, but I sort of got the feeling like he made
everything he did to create the CD as accessible as possible and just
let it go from there.

I haven't looked closely at the stuff yet, but knowing how a machine
boots, knowing how the install kernel works, etc, I can understand how
it's put together.

"restore-CD" for pkgsrc... Expand on that if you would... Would this
be some ability to build a restore CD for any platform based on a
pkgsrc entry? Like, maybe, passing in a directory which contains all
the NetBSD install tar files, and then some extra parameters to do
whatever, and then build an iso image?

If it was just for Cobalt, then I'd say maybe it's a little much. We
have most of what we need to build the CD already and just put it out.

BUT, if you were thinking of doing this based on some platforms that
don't commonly have graphical consoles or removeable boot media, but
are simple enough to netboot in some fashion.... That could work. I
have an HP PA box at work that would be really cool to do that with
since it has only a serial console and no ability to put in a cdrom or
floppy drive...

Don't want anyone to think I'm capable of doing all this myself
though, I'm a little slow sometimes...

Andy