Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:29:11 -0400 From: Mikel King <mikel.king@olivent.com> To: Ken Smith <kensmith@cse.Buffalo.EDU> Cc: Randi Harper <randi@freebsd.org>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Fbsd1 <fbsd1@a1poweruser.com> Subject: Re: Install from a USB Pen (semi OT) Message-ID: <B55F0B36-FDBF-4D6D-872D-A56E98B5A97C@olivent.com> In-Reply-To: <1248115701.17503.53.camel@bauer.cse.buffalo.edu> References: <a5f2f3950907130502x729f4dfbq23110234fbab4095@mail.gmail.com> <4A5BEABB.6070802@a1poweruser.com> <e277d6c80907140154u1b511f00ua4147a075d12b20b@mail.gmail.com> <4A5D6453.3060100@a1poweruser.com> <e277d6c80907150852y2183f12ex90b6d324709053a1@mail.gmail.com> <4A5E876C.8000804@a1poweruser.com> <e277d6c80907152025u2255e1bet7d005ece655321f5@mail.gmail.com> <4A602684.4030205@a1poweruser.com> <4A614478.5080400@a1poweruser.com> <1248115701.17503.53.camel@bauer.cse.buffalo.edu>
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On Jul 20, 2009, at 2:48 PM, Ken Smith wrote: > On Sat, 2009-07-18 at 11:41 +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: > >> Took 3 times longer to download the 8.0-BETA1-i386-memstick.img >> that to >> download the 8.0-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso. I suggest you look into >> another >> method of creating the memstick.img so it downloads faster. dd does >> no >> compression of the data. > > You're comparing apples to oranges here to some extent. disc1 isn't > compressed either. The reason the memstick is larger is that it > contains more stuff than disc1. That extra stuff is usually > referred to > as "livefs" and having that allows the memstick to be used in "Fixit" > mode - you can boot off the memstick and enter into sysinstall's > "Fixit" > menu item which in turn you can use to get to a usable shell that has > all the normal FreeBSD base system utilities available. That > functionality can be useful for recovering a machine from mistakes. > > The CDROM media has a separate livefs. We needed to separate them out > because of size issues on the CDROM media - the contents of disc1 plus > the contents needed from the livefs disc to make it work in Fixit mode > are too big for our target CDROM media size (700Mb). The DVD media > contains both so DVDs can be used for this 'Fixit' mode as well. > > If you're going to use download time as any sort of evaluation of the > memstick's merit you need to compare the speed of downloading it > versus > the speed of downloading both disc1 and livefs. Though I'm not quite > sure why that's any measure of the memstick's merit. > > I think I've settled on the memstick images containing what was > provided > with BETA2, which will be the installation bits from disc1, the livefs > bits, and just the packages that make up the documentation. Put a > slightly different way it's the contents of the DVD minus all packages > except for the documentation packages. That's my best guess on the > trade-off of size versus functionality that would benefit the most > end-users. > >> Using a 8gb memstick as the target to install 8.0 on took 2 times >> longer >> than disc1 cd installing to same 8gb memstick. > > This shouldn't come as too big a surprise, for *typical* machines > things > slow down a bit if you're using the same I/O subsystem for both reads > and writes. I'm guessing your CD isn't USB. Even if it is, you're > again comparing apples to oranges to a large degree here. If a speed > comparison is important to you here then compare the speed of > installing > from the memstick we provide versus one you create with your script > from > disc1. I'd be surprised if installing from the one you created using > your script was faster than the memstick we provide. > >> Here is a script i have used in the past to convert the disc1.iso to >> bootable memstick. Maybe its better to add this script to the place >> where 8.0-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso is located in place of the >> memstick.img. >> That way the 3 times larger memstick.img is not needed any more. > > Per above the 3 times larger memstick.img we're providing has more > functionality than what you would get by running your script. For > some > people your script also causes something of a chicken-and-egg > issue. It > may not be particularly convenient to run your script if you don't > already have FreeBSD installed on a machine. I don't see the harm > in us > providing one pre-built memstick image for peoples' convenience. Just curious, but is there an easy way to get all of this onto the pen in the first place? I missed the origin of the thread. Thanks, m.
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