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Date:      Sun, 27 Oct 2013 18:24:55 +1100 (EST)
From:      Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au>
To:        David Boyd <David.Boyd49@twc.com>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: memstick.img size adjustment
Message-ID:  <20131027144834.T80429@sola.nimnet.asn.au>
In-Reply-To: <0BEF1ADC0CFB448F9CB7264B652C4643@sneezy>
References:  <0BEF1ADC0CFB448F9CB7264B652C4643@sneezy>

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On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:37:04 -0400, David Boyd wrote:
 > Would it be in anyone else's interest to have the size of the memstick
 > images for 10.0-RELEASE+ adjusted upward a little (say 64MB) to allow for
 > some free space on the filesystem?
 > 
 > We have custom installation scripts that  add "misc.txz" to the bsdinstall
 > distribution list.  These scripts want "misc.txz" to be able to grow to a
 > few megabytes.
 > 
 > The current image is too large for 512MB USB drives, so it would seem that
 > as long as the image remains smaller than 1GB it will still fit on current
 > devices.

Can you still get 1GB sticks?  I haven't seen anything less than 4GB in 
local shops for ages, we see 4 and 8GB sticks given away as promotional 
keyfobs by various businesses, and 32GB sticks are no longer expensive.

I don't understand why we still aren't doing a 4GB image with the same 
content as the DVD by now.  PC-BSD was doing this at 8.2 or earlier.

But then, I never understood why we used DD mode (/dev/da0a) rather than 
a properly sliced MBR with the potential to have multiple releases &/or 
architectures on one stick.  Again, PC-BSD (at 8.2 anyway) made a stick 
with a slice table, so storing data (dmesg, pciconf, whatever) back to 
the stick was trivial, as was adding boot0 to allow boot selection.

 > Or can someone identify the custom changes we need to generate-release.sh in
 > order to accomplish this?

I'm all ears.

 > We need to be able to make this increase for 9.2-RELEASE+, but I hope this
 > is generally acceptable for future releases.

I must admit having given up on this some years ago; time I had another 
look to see where it's up to.  Not that MBR is likely to 'stop working', 
but is there yet any replacement for boot0 for GPT partitioning in the 
wings?  I know all the Big Guys are using virtualbox and I suppose that 
multibooting is considered passe` these days; call me an old fogie ..

cheers, Ian



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