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Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:25:03 -0800
From: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@freebsd.org>
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To: Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@iet.unipi.it>
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Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: convert bootable freebsd iso to bootable flash image
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Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> Just in case people have a similar need, or can point me to better
> code to do the same job:
> 
> i needed to convert a bootable FreeBSD iso image into a bootable
> flash image, and have come up with the following code (derived
> from PicoBSD). The nice part is that this is all done without
> requiring root permissions -- the iso extraction is done with
> bsdtar, the file system is created using makefs, and the
> other patching is done with bsdlabel and dd.

It doesn't look like this would preserve file ownership,
which can be important.

It might be interesting to use libarchive within makefs
so that makefs can generate the filesystem image directly
from tar or iso archives and preserve all of the ownership,
permissions, etc.

Tim