FreeBSD Based Live CDs

Newtonian_p writes "Now the BSD world has an answer to Knoppix. The FreeSBIE project have released a live FreeBSD based system on CD. There are also plans to develop a suite of programs to be used to create a personalized disk." If it offers a painless BSD install (the way Knoppix makes it easy to install Debian to a hard drive), this should be a popular project. Reader Cronopios links to a related effort called LiveBSD which "has heavily modified FreeSBIE's scripts to allow for apache mysql and many other programs to run."

Comments

I'm there!

[phrostie]

i'd been meaning to give one of the BSDs and other try. maybe nows the time.

good news.

Re:I'm there!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:I'm there! (Score:-1, Redundant)
by Anonymous Coward on 08:21 AM -- Wednesday March 03 2004 (#8450951)
The parent is offtopic. The grandparent is interesting. We really need to sort out this moderating ...


Yeah, what he said.

Re:I'm there!

[phrostie]

it's ok, i'm used to being moded as redundent without reason. i figure, it's /.

i did not realize that that i got FP!
Cool, it's my first.

Re:I'm there!

[phrostie]

Wow, a scriptkiddie. that's one thing i've never been accused of being before. that's like when some young 25 year old tries to card me for beer.
i just have to laugh. thanks!

Re:I'm there!

[afroborg]

Well then why are you posting in the BSD section Fuckstick?

FreeSBIE?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least if I mess up the CD burning, I won't get a coaster!

Hopefully eventually

[beware1000]

I'd really like to see one of those Business card size CD's in BSD form. The Linux ones have saved me more times than I can count.

Re:Hopefully eventually

[bloodstains]

the guys over at unixpunxhave a distrib that fits on a mini CD

Re:Hopefully eventually

[Palshife]

I dont know what kind of CDROM you have, but I've never once been able to load one of those.

Re:Hopefully eventually

[nabetse]

You can get the businesss card size CD's for free at loadux.com . I got mine a few days ago and works great! I take it to school on my wallet and use it instead of Windows that's installed on most of the school PC's.

Re:Hopefully eventually

[beware1000]

slow burning speeds and using the bump to line it up in the tray has always been my key to success :)

Re:Hopefully eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

And it has Opera...YOU ROCK

Re:Hopefully eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, there is Damn Small Linux
It's got SciTE, a very useful editor.

Not much info available

[Trillan]

Yeah, I RTFA, but it's pretty sparse. Can anyone involved explain a bit more how this works?

I would think it would be similiar to the MandrakeMove(?) live linux CD we saw earlier this year, but bad things happen when I make assumptions. :)

OS Comparison

[DarkkOne]

This is good news for alot of people (like me.) I've just recently developed a fairly major interest in GNU/Linux, other alternatives, free software (as in speech) and the like. I've tried several GNU/Linux liveCDs, but am still in my "distro-decision" process, and having another alternative to try out will be very nice. Definitely a step in the right direction, the more OSes that you can "try before you buy" so to speak, the better, 'eh?

Re:OS Comparison

[akuma624]

You're right. I've been using SuSE because I picked it up pretty cheap at the local CompUSA. The freedom that comes from open source is amazing.

Re:OS Comparison

[MooCows]

IMHO the best thing to do is grab a spare computer, download a bunch of interesting distro's (Linux, BSD, whatever you want), install them and use them for a day or two.

You're bound to come across a distro suited for your needs.
(server, router, desktop, multimedia system, whatever you want)

Every Linux distro has it's upsides and it's downsides (both are mostly about whether it's something for you).

As for the BSD's, I've never tried them, but afaik they're a bit more geared towards servers/security than Linux.

It still comes down to personal choice :)

Re:OS Comparison

[DarkkOne]

Well, actually I'm looking for a variety of purposes. I need my internet gateway machine set up, a local network server for a variety of purposes, a development box (which in the end is probably going to end up running a Microsoft OS, because mainly I'm going to be working on a game project I've put aside for too long, and unfortunately if I ever want to sell it, the "mainstream" is still running MS. Though, with my development rate, GNU/Linux will be "mainstream" by then and MS will be suffering from bitrot. And yes, it'll probably include source either on-cd, or available online if I ever do finish and sell.)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, machines which will be running various OSes.
A) Game Development platform.
B) Internet Gateway
C) Internal multipurpose server. (Print/File/Internal document/http hosting)
D) Laptop.

That last one's the fun one. It's a Sony VAIO PCG-NVR23, and I really want to move it to GNU/Linux, as it serves mainly as a word processor and web browser, so there's no excuse for it to have ANY non-free software, but I'm not familiar enough with GNU/Linux to necessarily be able to follow the directions I've found to get it working. Though I'm sure once I RTFM (or RTFD as the case may be) I'll get things worked out in the end.

Anyway, suggestions for a few of those will be welcome, so long as you guys don't get into arguments about it. (Y'know, a few simple "Why this might work here" style comments are nice. Any posts that claim someone else is wrong, are most certainly not.)

Re:OS Comparison

[tiger99]

Hopefully give them a bit more than a day or two. Try configuring printers, firewall, scanner, compiling a kernel, downloading updates.....

After a few months it will be a fairer comparison, if you can spare the time of course. You may find that most are good, none are perfect, and it depends which imperfections you want to tolerate. But, I'm sure you will find one that you like, and it will be of more use, in the long term, than the badly broken "competitive" products of the Convicted Monopolist, or the abominal violation of the GPL known as SCO Unix.

Re:OS Comparison

[pnutjam]

I would love to run Linux on my laptop, IBM Thinkpad 770z, but I find the wireless support in Linux to be sorely lacking.

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest migrating the boxes you listed in the following order: B, C, D, A. Learning about iptables (sorry, last time I used Linux as a router firewall that's what was used) and ports, etc as you set up B will be a big help in troubleshooting problems with C. By then you will be comfortable enough to try D and then A. A and D are probably switchable. I personally went B, moved to OpenBSD before setting up C, moved to OS X for D, and quit developing software before trying A. :-) Enjoy. You are about to embark on a frustrating but very rewarding journey.

Re:OS Comparison

[DarkkOne]

From what I've been able to tell, in my limited readings, the wireless support "out of box" at the moment seems to be lacking, but a little spot research and it seems often enough what you need can be found out there. If you've already installed and are discovering you're in trouble, and don't have an ethernet port to plug into, you may be in trouble, but since you're posting here, I imagine a little pre-planning is all you need.

Re:OS Comparison

[DarkkOne]

That's actually the order I was planning on going about things, I was just typing them out as they came to mind. As for A, it's *probably* not being migrated, I'll just be waiting until I have the cash to drop on a new machine. I may not be a fan of Windows anymore, but I figure I should respect an end user's desire to run it, and try to develop for a couple platforms. Heck, if I could put together a cheap Mac I mind even pitch in for one of those one day.

Re:OS Comparison

[joshmccormack]

It's the "install them" part that takes up more time than would be ideal, and becomes the focus of too many reviews. Have you noticed most reviews of distors focus on installation and breeze over everything else? Seems a little crazy, doesn't it? I mean, even installing Gentoo or something, which can really become an experience to brag about, is generally not something you're doing every day.

Installing the *BSDs has not had the ease that many of the Linux distros have had, so hopefully this will encourage more competition, options, and enjoyment and savings.

Re:OS Comparison

[El Cubano]

... a development box (which in the end is probably going to end up running a Microsoft OS, because mainly I'm going to be working on a game project I've put aside for too long, and unfortunately if I ever want to sell it, the "mainstream" is still running MS.

No need to pollute your machine. I develop a computer simulation (it started as a thesis project), so it has almost all the same requirements a modern game would have: 3-D graphics, sound, GUI, etc. I use wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) which gets me pretty much every feature I need. The best part is tha I can use the gcc cross-compiler to build the win32 target .exe from my Linux box. I then have friends of mine test the final windows .exe (after I do some preliminary testing through WINE).

I would assert that is better to develop the Win32 apps from linux than from win32. Especially since I don't have to worry about VS.NET flaking out on me, or the other crappy tools that are common on Windows.

Re:OS Comparison

[Sweetshark]

You might also take a look at distrowatch to find candidates...

Re:OS Comparison

[Hel Toupee]

Having used FreeBSD since 1999 or so for one reason or another, and having looked at several Linux distros, I'll throw in my 2cents.

FreeBSD looks like UNIX (oversimplification, albeit) down-and-dirty. I ran X on it for awhile (enlightenment or fvwm95 on a 486DX/66) and will never again. It really is not set up for a GUI, and you will do a ton of work getting it there. It will run Linux-compatible binaries provided you have the right libraries.
This is what I would use as the server because I am comfortable with it, and feel it is faster and more secure in this capacity. (I have little proof of the proceeding statement, but know there are thousands of benchmarks that prove me either right or wrong)

Linux distros I've tried range from pretty and trendy (Mandrake, Knoppix), to Windows clones (Lin---s, Licoris), to down-and-dirty UNIX type (Slackware). Mandrake would be my choice for the laptop and the development box because I just like the way it feels.

The FreeBSD live CD doesn't seem like anything more than an educational tool, because, IMHO, FreeBSD is supposed to be installed, customized, and left to what it does best, run server daemons. Check out linuxISO.org if you haven't already. It is a quick resource for information about a TON of different distros.

Re:OS Comparison

[74nova]

i agree completely(talk to my isp, they know) about trying lots of different distros. i also agree with another reply to yours that said give it a little longer than a couple days.

i have one small thing to add about what youve said, however. not a correction, just an addition. something a new linux user need to think about is the speed of the machine used for testing versus that of the machine it will be used on. if you are blessed enough to have a spare machine that is up to standards, then by all means, do it that way. however, if your spare machine is a little older like my pII450, some distros may behave a little worse on it than they would on your main rig. mandrake with kde(i just took the defaults, havent looked into any lighter display or window managers, yet) is slow on the aformentioned 450. its great on my 1GHz amd, however.

all that to say that make sure you understand the performance differences between the distros and the machine you test on vs the one you plan to use it on for real.

Re:OS Comparison

[scrytch]

FreeBSD looks like UNIX (oversimplification, albeit) down-and-dirty. I ran X on it for awhile (enlightenment or fvwm95 on a 486DX/66) and will never again. It really is not set up for a GUI, and you will do a ton of work getting it there.

Yeah, clicking on "Desktop" in the installer, that really was hard.

It will run Linux-compatible binaries provided you have the right libraries.

I forgot to undertake the astonishingly difficult task of clicking "Linux Compatibility" in the install, so I had to resort to the incredibly complex "make install" command in any of the linux binaries port because I forgot that the linux base system had the incredibly cryptic name of "linux-base".

You sir posited zero evidence for your assertions.

Re:OS Comparison

[mbadolato]

It really is not set up for a GUI, and you will do a ton of work getting it there. It will run Linux-compatible binaries provided you have the right libraries.

Oh come now... I've installed FreeBSD on a few machines ranging from a Dell pII 400 to a Frankenputer(tm) I built from parts lying around the house. I've never had any issues getting X running with Gnome, KDE, Windowmaker, or anything else. I choose the options right in the installer and it just works for me.

From there the GUI runs just like it does in Linux.

Re:OS Comparison

[BlueBat]

IMHO the best thing to do is grab a spare computer, download a bunch of interesting distro's (Linux, BSD, whatever you want), install them and use them for a day or two.

I would love to do this but all of my old computers go to family members. Even my fathers old computers go to family members. I am planning on installing Linux but I need to redo my drive and reinstall my Windows 98SE. I figure I may be able to do it in a couple of weeks as I am currently working on a number of systems for family members.

I still need my Windows 98SE because I like to play games and most games wont run under Linux. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will have time to do this. In the meantime, I play with the Live CD versions.

BlueBat

Re:OS Comparison

[UnassumingLocalGuy]

Maybe back in 1999 your rant holds true, but no more today. X and WindowMaker run happily on my little P133 laptop, and it took minimal effort to set up. Linux binary compatibility is a breeze to set up, I had UT2003 running (not on my laptop, of course) and fragging away.

Next time you run the FreeBSD sysinstall, take a little more time and pay more attention.

Re:OS Comparison

[gnu-generation-one]

"I use wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows)"

How easy is it to get OpenGL working on that?

Re:OS Comparison

[IronChef]

It really is not set up for a GUI, and you will do a ton of work getting it there.

yeah, "make install" just about killed me. and I can never remember that "startx" thing you have to do.

Re:OS Comparison

[jdray]

I recently went laptop shopping, and had decided that it was going to run Linux exclusively (no dual boot to Windows). I started by deciding which distro I wanted to use (SuSE was the end choice after much deliberation), then looking at their "supported hardware" page under notebooks. Lo and behold, SuSE has only certified IBM notebooks with their latest version, 9.0 (more brands to follow, I'm sure).

Reading the certification results (example), I found that the internal WLAN card wasn't supported. Not to be deterred, I searched IBM's web site and found this, along with several other documents, that puts me right on the path.

Unfortunately, a lot of research is required to find info when doing something like this. Don't be deterred by just one source.

Re:OS Comparison

[Brandybuck]

It really is not set up for a GUI, and you will do a ton of work getting it there.

I must respectfully disagree. I am using FreeBSD as my primary desktop OS at home and at work. I'ts fully "GUIified". KDE 3.2. MPlayer, Xmms, yada, yada, yada.

While setting stuff up isn't automatically done for you before you even insert the install CD, it still isn't that difficult. Thanks to XFree86 (the true hero of the desktop), the days of having to manually compute modelines is ancient history. Run the command "XFree86 -configure" and you are done! You may want to tweak stuff afterwards, but the meat of the configuration is done.

Of course, if even the briefest glimpse of a command line is give you a case of the heebie jeebies, perhaps you should stay away.

Re:OS Comparison

[gareth6889]

OT: anyone had any luck getting freebsd 5.x working in virtual pc 6?

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux distros I've tried range from pretty and trendy (Mandrake, Knoppix), to Windows clones (Lin---s, Licoris), to down-and-dirty UNIX type (Slackware).

ummm, maybe in earlier versions, but 8.1 and up are pretty darn similair to the more popular distros, Slack just doesn't have the (abundance of )fluff, which is better, because it is better for the user to customize his machine.

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Having used FreeBSD since 1999 or so for one reason or another

Having used FreeBSD since 1997 or so for one reason or another and X11 for longer than that, I can tell that you are clearly a total loser.

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think it was that hard, I think you should stick with Windows or Mac OS. No offence, but really, to be that clueless?? Scary man, scary.

Re:OS Comparison

[Hel Toupee]

Ok, allow me to clarify. First of all, I didn't mean to make it sound like getting linux compatibility was hard, it is terribly easy. The "correct libraries" comment refers to the difficulty I had with getting Opera (circa '99) to build from sources (ya know, before it was available as a port/package). There were two libraries missing, can't remember which ones. One I found quite easily, the other I couldn't. Later that box was scrapped, and I never used X on BSD again. so no need to try opera. Many of the ports/packages themselves use linux compatibility and work as flawlessly as they would on Linux (I'm resonably sure).

Now, my comment about X on BSD may have been a touch unfounded. Getting X to physically work was mostly painless (most of my experience was pre FBSD4.0). Part of my frustration could have been in not choosing a good window manager, or that the machine was a touch slow (486 DX/66 w/32 MB RAM), but I found that I had to do a whole lot of editing of my WM's config file to get the interface to look like I wanted it. Later, when I tried Mandrake (new laptop, wanted to try something different, was at work and buddy had mandrake install disks) X looked so pretty, and I liked it. I only had to change one config file to get my screen to display at 1280x800 (widescreen laptop) and it was set up very close to how I liked it. Now, it's possible that 4 years of development has something to do with it, or that I was just in a good mood that day, or that I should have tried KDE on the BSD box, or that I'm a stupid noob; I'm fine with all of those things, but the guy wanted opinions, and I gave them.

I would never say that one is better than the other (especially in Slashdot forums) because doing so would get me tarred-and-feathered by one group or another.

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot! (... my!-my!-my!)

Why say anything at all?! Your comments are based upon different OSes on different machines and at different times in history--four (4) years as you proclaim. And time and space affect all things concerned.

Now, look what you wrote:

"I have little proof of the proceeding statement, but know there are thousands of benchmarks that prove me either right or wrong."

After making a statement...you then clobbered it and nuffified it.

---
I'm registered Slashdot user with a user id in the mid-79000s. Though things were bad back in 1997 when I started visiting this site, they have gotten worse through the years.

L. S.

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I have installed FreeBSD an my Xwindow desktop and it runs sweet on my PIII, 550MHa, 390MB machine. Including KDE, antialiased fonts in browser, great looking, fully localized Office software, sound and tons of games. Even "first person shooters" ala Quake II (cube). There are cca 500 games for download as packages. Everything works great. *Almost* out of the box. (had to tweak sound card, and install nvidia accelerated drivers).

Re:OS Comparison

[indigoid]

and i'm a /. user with a user id that is approximately 5% of yours, thus my $OBJECT is FAR bigger!

i think this is the first /. comment i've bothered posting in several years. apparently unlike a lot of posters here i've been very happily using fvwm since late 1994 when i first installed lunix. i did spend a couple of years using enlightenment instead, and i do occasionally trick myself into thinking that the apparently modern "desktop environments" are worth trying again, just in case they aren't as stupidly overcomplicated as they were when i last looked. i always end up thinking (after a period of self-induced torture lasting between a day and a few months):

"dear $DEITY, you were stupid, fvwm is happiness, peace, love, a dash of vintage port, and all those other lovely things"

i suppose one advantage of these livecd type arrangements is that you get to try out various bits of dubious flavour-of-the-month software, without polluting your serious computing setup. :D

i recently installed openbsd 3.4 on an old quad-cpu (what a waste - no smp in 3.4 :/) hypersparc ss20, as a 9-interface firewall. hme[0-3], qe[0-3], le0. it works quite nicely. pf is good. some parts of openbsd are much nicer than solaris. recommended.

Re:OS Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, clicking on "Desktop" in the installer, that really was hard.
Where is there the ability to click anything in the FreeBSD install routine? Are you sure you weren't installing RedHat?

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[MoonFog]

Linux needs LiveCDs, but the BSDs certainly stand on their own.

Why is this ? IMHO, Linux stands just fine on its own. People have been talking on slashdot about how they use the Live CDs to show people what Linux can do, and to run Linux where you cannot install etc, I can't see why it should be any different with a BSD live cd. My guess is that it will be used as the Linux live cd's, to test and try. I think it's a good idea, and I will most certainly try it, I don't buy your idea that BSD stands better on its own than Linux though.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[moberry]

The purpose of the live CD is not as your actual OS. It is used for testing the operating system to see if it works correctly with your hardware. I have also used P.H.L.A.K (A lighweight, hackery live CD also, like knoppix based on debian)for disaster recovery on windows systems. It works quite well.

BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

" If it offers a painless BSD install "

I was shocked, yes shocked, at how easy OpenBSD was installed on my intel machine. The mac install was another kettle of fish but the intel install was the easiest install I've ever done. FreeBSD wasn't exactly a difficult install either. I don't remember NetBSD being hard come to think of it. Actually, has anybody found an intel BSD OS difficult to install?

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[clymere]

Yes, it was a pain in the ass when I tried it on old hardware(p1). Of course i am a total newbie as far as the BSD's, I'm well aware that many install them on old hardware for use as routers. However, I can defintly say that I found BSD's to be more difficult then Linux on obsolete hardware. Maybe its easy once you know what you're doing.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Simon Lyngshede]

I found the NetBSD disklabel tool difficult to use, so I used OpenBSD to slice my disk. But other than that, no I agree, the BSD'es are very easy to install.

OpenBSD is wonderfully easy to install.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[LeoDV]

" Maybe its easy once you know what you're doing."

Well isn't that the case with all computers and software? I've installed all the Big Three BSDs, several iterations of the much feared Slack, Debian and countless other distros, and they've never posed any serious problems -- sure, driver/package issues and the like, but zero showstoppers. Why? I'm fairly computer literate, but nothing exceptional, I have no l33t *nix 1nst4ll sk1llz (maybe some experience).

All I did was read, download and print down the necessary information for each distro/flavour before installing it. And everything went smooth from there.

I hate those so-called gurus who just tell you to read the man pages when you come to them with a problem, but if you want to install and configure Linux/BSD, reading up is really all you have to do.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Punk Walrus]

I found OpenBSD so easy, it was virtually painless.

1. Burn floppy
2. Insert floppy into old hardware (in this case, a 486 DX4 100), reboot machine
3. OpenBSD boots from floppy. Asked me if I want to Install, upgrade, or cancel. I chose (I)nstall
4. Asked me which hard drive.
5. Gave me fdisk like partition manager. Listed whole drive as c with one bit "a" FAT16 partition. I deleted "a," entered in the partitions I needed, with "b" being my swap by default. Did w,q to write and quit.
6. Asked me to set up network interface, root password, etc...
7. Asked me which install type, I set up ftp, I selected the mirror closest to me, selected the packages I wanted, and then waited for install to complete (20 min on cable modem).
8. I took out the floppy, rebooted, and got a login prompt.
9. Signed in as root, and heeded "afterboot" security warning.

Then I installed bash with a simple add_pkg command, added non-root user, set up pf, found apache was installed and set up by default, changed forwarding to "1", slapped pfctl and apachectl to run, and wala! Working router/NAT/webserver in less than an hour.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'm gonna sue you!

I did exactly what you told me to do, but when I tried to burn the floppy, my burner jammed. Now I can't even burn CD's anymore.

Then I burned the floppy by hand (with a match) and stuck it into my Apple][. Immediately smoke started to come out of the back and now my priceless Apple is RUINED!!!

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see where someone might screw up with Open's fdisk the first time they use it, however.

But the entire install takes about 15 minutes, so trying again doesn't set you back very far. OpenBSD's install is the easiest, by far.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[LoganEkz]

Installing OpenBSD was a piece of cake, just some new users might be put off by the text only installer at first, but if you can get past that, you'll realize that it is so straight forward.

One of the things I love about OpenBSD is that the documentation and man pages are so well done, having a look at the Installation Guide and the afterboot(8) man page, virtually anyone can have full fledged secure by default OS installed configured in a breeze.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Hel Toupee]

On obsolete hardware, I've found that FreeBSD, anyway, is much easier than Linux. FreeBSD is perfectly happy installing off of a floppy to any 486 or better with a network connection. Most Linux installs I've tried either don't have the option to go from floppy, or want a large amout of RAM (for the hardware in question) to install. My worst installation experience was Mandrake 9.1 on a P150 laptop with no cd drive and a non-standard cardbus controller that refuses to work with the yenta-socket driver. If BSD would have recognized the PCMCIA NIC, it would have been wham, bam, thank-you-ma'am. IIRC, even if Mandrake would have seen the NIC, I would still have to export the install CD's from a NFS server somewhere, because they don't have a central FTP site to use. As it was, I ended up pulling the hard drive out and loading the install stuff on it from another computer, then booting an install disk and using the low-mem configuration (I only have 48 meg) to install from the hard drive.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[krusader]

1. Burn floppy

Isn't it going to be hard to boot off that floppy if you burn it?

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to run FreeBSD 4.8 and 4.9 for a while, and found both of them quite easy to install. I can see how the kernel config screen may throw some first-time users, but for the most part the rest of the installation is rather intuitive. I only stopped using it because I bought an ATI tuner card, and gave up trying to get it working. I still prefer FreeBSD over linux, but until I have the time to figure out where I was going wrong with the tuner card I'm content with a Slackware install.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem here.
Linux suse 9.0 could not handle for some reason, DVD maybe, my box (SCSI MegaRaid, Three Channel with Dual 450mhz PII) FreeBSD just roolled all over it. The nicest experience yet. I have also found Solaris very easy to install on older hardware. NetBSD was also a completely cool gooo.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Openbsd refused to install after the 1024th cylinder or couldn't detect the empty space, in the end I gave up and installed slackware. Much easier.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[ajr_trm]

I was shocked how annoying was to install Debian Linux compared to installing FreeBSD.

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[dasunt]

" If it offers a painless BSD install "

I was shocked, yes shocked, at how easy OpenBSD was installed on my intel machine. The mac install was another kettle of fish but the intel install was the easiest install I've ever done. FreeBSD wasn't exactly a difficult install either. I don't remember NetBSD being hard come to think of it. Actually, has anybody found an intel BSD OS difficult to install?

"Painless BSD install" means "I don't need to know what I'm doing."

FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD have *detailed* installation instructions available on the project's homepage. I've installed OpenBSD as a BSD newbie on a laptop without any serious problems.

Why is reading the manual considered so un-user friendly? After all, you are installing megabytes of binaries onto varying architectures with countless permutations of additional hardware. Then you are probably planning to add additional software to the system (additional countless permutations). Finally, the chances are good that you are going to hook the system up to a world wide network full of hostile machines.

Call me an elitist, but perhaps the OpenBSD way is the best -- rather simple install (if you are willing to read the Instruction Manual) and services turned off by default. If you need something, you need to know how to configure and activate it yourself.

Don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against end users, and I am not advocating a difficult UI for them. I have no doubts that I could set up a BSD system that's user friendly enough for my mother. But using a system is not the same as installing it -- no more then driving a car is the same as designing a car.

Just my $.02

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[randyflood]

The last time I intsalled NetBSD on a machine, we had to boot it off of a boot tape! So, relative to the typical Linux installation, I'd say it was pretty tough. :) I also remember having to do math to calculate the number of blocks or cylinders or something in order to get the partitions just the way I wanted them. Ofcourse, that was like a decade ago, so, I'm guessing that things have changed a bit since then...

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[Anonymous Coward]

s/wala/voila/g

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[74nova]

i know it was a joke, but its kinda strange to me. people use "burn" for everything nowadays. we do some dv and dvd work and my boss actually refers to "burning" a vhs tape

Re:BSD isn't a hard install

[frAme57]

It can be a pain to install on middle-aged hardware too. I recently spent a weekend trying to put FreeBSD onto a homebrew box (an ABIT board w/ Athlon proc and pretty ordinary PCI cards). I tried installing from both CDs and the 'net but after every install - a kernel panic on rebooting.

The good news is that I am posting this from the same machine booted on the FreeBSIE disc. Maybe it would be worth trying to install FreeBSD 5.x

You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[Meefan]

Since when? AFIAK, Knoppix is live CD only. No install. I used it yesterday to teach a Linux class, and if there's an install option, I didn't see it. -Dave

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[broadcast_255]

yes you can, there is command like knoppix-install or somethin' i already forgot, but i did it several times last year

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[The_DOD_player]

I might be biting a troll here.. but you can install Knoppix.
Just open up a console, su, and run "knx-hdinstall". Its "just" a shellscript, so you can browse while installing. After install you get a Debian Sid system.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[dtl]

It has been there for ages. Open up a root shell and run knx-hdinstall

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[kahei]

You can indeed install it -- the result is a kind of Debian-lite installation. It's probably better to install real Debian once Knoppix has led the way; installed Knoppix has some quirks, such as a tendency to read things from the CD image on the HD now and then.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[dinivin]

knx-hdinstall

Dinivin

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[gl4ss]

since like, forever.

there's few ways to do it, you can install the image to hd and run it from there. or do a normal installation(as other replier said, knx-hdinstall iirc).

however be aware that upgrading from this installed system to a normal debian system might not go as smoothly as you'd hope(it might though, but I'd rather use a 'proper' installation cd and do a netinstall).

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[TJmoney]

It is also possible to copy the cd to a hard drive and run it from there, without actually installing it. I'm not sure if the normal install needs a new partition, but this method definately doesn;t. Much better speed then the cd, obviously. at the boot screen put "knoppix tohd=/dev/hda1" to copy, and from then on "knoppix fromhd=/dev/hda" to run it from there.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[diogenesx]

If you want a knoppix like install from a livecd, try mepis [www.mepis.org]. It's a debian-based distro designed to be both a livecd AND an installer cd. It's fantastic. I'm running it on my laptop and mp3 server right now.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[lxs]

As others have pointed out, you can indeed install Knoppix on a harddisk. Beware however that you will get a Debian Unstable system. This can sometimes lead to problems when doing apt-get upgrade (like apt suddenly deciding all by itself that KDE and all that depends on it really needs to be removed --that's why they call it unstable I guess)

If you're looking for the stability of Debian, do a "real" netinstall of the current stable version. If you want the cool new toys, then Knoppix is the easiest way to install a Debian that doesn't lag two years behind the other distros.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[tahtalim]

I believe it is sarge/sid mix where sarge is the default release. Of course this is based on apt configuration (sources list etc). In terms of actually installed packages it is difficult to say because there may be many non-standard packages.

--- If knowledge is power, then what is a nuclear bomb? ---

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[boudie]

There is a "toram" boot prompt option which will run the whole cd from your RAM. Better have a gig. Never tried it (need another stick or two).

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[The_DOD_player]

Yeah, well, I suppose thats more correct, but its not all sarge :)
It can be a pain on a new debian-knoppix install, many packages does not install because of the strange package mix. This does however decrease over time, as you dist-upgrade.

(hmm... this is a FreeBSD talk. We shouldnt be talking debian ;))

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[CoolHnd30]

I've installed Debian off Knoppix on about 10 pc's over the past year. I initially ran into the problem above.

Then I stroked my sources and apt preferences correctly, that would iron out. I've since been running Debian unstable on 3 systems for the last 4 months without a hitch, all installed with Knoppix.

I could never get all my hardware working correctly with a straight Debian install (without kernel recompiles and other mucking about). But having installed with Knoppix, its just WORKED !!

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just open up a console, su, and run "knx-hdinstall"."

And eventually apt-get becomes f_ed beyond all reconciling, and won't install anything.

I heard that some debian people were a bit annoyed that their operating system was being misrepresented among people who'd used the knoppix install, and then ended up with a package manager in such a state that it could't operate any longer. Of course, anyone who uses debian for the first time will try to apt-get everything under the sun because that's debian's party-trick, so it's probably a bit of a stress-test anyway.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[The_DOD_player]

And eventually apt-get becomes f_ed beyond all reconciling, and won't install anything.

Yeah yeah yeah...
Strange.. I have several debian machines installed with Knoppix, and they dont seem to be f_ up yet, and I dont believe they will any time soon.
Ofcource I've been taken the time to weed out some of the unwanted packages, like i18n in 27 languages, OpenOffice-1.0-DE and other stuff I know I'll never use.

Debian people annoyed? Tough luck, I say. Make a more friendly installer, and they might get som sympathy.

Re:You can install Knoppix...?!?!?

[nutznboltz]

It's probably better to install real Debian once Knoppix has led the way

When you install Woody over Knoppix all the auto-configuration gets smashed. You can't have it both ways.

You can indeed install it -- the result is a kind of Debian-lite installation

Actually it pretty heavy when you consider the the Knoppix CD is compressed. It's also way more advanced and way less tested as a unit than Woody. The package collection isn't just sid, it's from a number of version of Debian so "apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade" not likely to work at all.

Available for purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

Just seen it at blcds.com for sale, if anyone's interested

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[neodymium]

Especially for Firewalls, it is a good idea to use (modified) live-CDs. This way, everything is stored on a read-only filesystem, even in the rare case of a BSD remote root exploit, a reboot fixes everything.

Now?

[cperciva]

Now the BSD world has an answer to Knoppix

Err... This may be "Stuff that matters", but it shouldn't be "News for Nerds". FreeBSD has had live CDs since at least 2002.

Re:Now?

[Anonymous Coward]

'FreeBSD has had live CDs since at least 2002'

I've been able to generate 'live' cd's since
make buildworld DESTDIR=targetdir.

All you need is sufficient space to store around 120MB of FreeBSD OS, a copy of mkisofs, and know how to use release/write_mfs_in_kernel.c.
Its a little slow for X unless you use the ufs in vn on cd trick (ld.so takes ages to mmap from a cd9660 fs) but otherwise ok.

I thought the ability to create a single cd FreeBSD was old news - its documented in the manual. oh well.

Re:Now?

[kent_eh]

News? Not really.

I have been using this particular FreeSBIE disk for a couple of months now. Using it to post this, as a matter of fact.

I'm using it at work on a machine that normally runs XP and takes twice as long to boot to XP as it does to the live CD.

For some reason the giant list of Live CDs doesn't seem to include the BSD variants.

There are 8 different *BSD live CDs listed at LiveCDNews.com.

Re:Now?

[zam4ever]

Oh la la.. Here is the list of Live-medium for BSD that I keep: Click Here cheers

Another Live CD

[Anonymous Coward]

Another FreeBSD-based live CD is BSDeviant.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Lussarn]

LiveCDs have alot of purposes, I use them as servers. I run internet based games at work, At the end of the registration periods we need about 2,3,4 or more webservers just for a couple of hours to handle the load (and we have quite a few to begin with). I have a LiveCD which I can pop into any workstation and have a instant webserver (No reformating of windows machines that is).

It's based on knoppix, only took me a couple of hours to work ou how to remaster it to suit my needs.

LiveCDs are cool.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[cperciva]

If there's a remote root exploit, rebooting is merely going to make an attacker wait five minutes and then re-run the exploit. A better solution is a CD-RW disk in a CD-ROM drive -- you can always reboot into a clean system, but if there are security issues, you can remove the disk, fix the necessary bits, and then reboot.

Plan 9

[IncarnadineConor]

When is someone going to make one of these for plan 9? Leaving one of those in my drive would be a perfect way to make sure no one can screw with my computer.

Re:Plan 9

[Anonymous Coward]

The Plan9 installation CD is a 'live cd'. When you boot it, you are asked if you want to install or run from the cd. (This applies to PC type hardware).

Available from plan9 (this page will take you to 'additional software' after you agree to the license, select the current snapshot to get a 70Meg download)

Useful if money is tight

[Jexx Dragon]

I've been using Knoppix for some time now, as I have to use Windows on my computer and cannot afford another. I think that for those of us who like to get experiance with as many operating enviroments as possible, but can not set up systems for each this could be a very useful project. Though I suppose one could always just dual- or multi-boot.

LiveCD.

[Sentosus]

I enjoy playing with LiveCDs, but I always find that we are not taking advantage of the writing ability of many CD drives.

I want my configuration changes as well as any programs I install to be burned on the CD in either rewritable or writeable with limited space type setup.

If I download a neat application and install it or save a word doc in my directory, I want it automatically cued up to be burned when I shutdown.

Also, it would be nice to be able to go to a website and enter your hardware configuration and a customer version of the live cd be created on the server and be available for download with your drivers in ISO format.

SP

Re:LiveCD.

[mst76]

> I enjoy playing with LiveCDs, but I always find that we are not taking advantage of the writing ability of many CD drives.
[...]
> If I download a neat application and install it or save a word doc in my directory, I want it automatically cued up to be burned when I shutdown.

First, most LiveCD systems are already packed to the brim, and don't allow you to unmount you're main CD during operation, so you'd need at least two drives. Second, there are two ways to add files to a cd-rw: multisession and packet writing. Multisession is widely supported, but not suitable for small files as there is a overhead of about 15MB for each new session. Packet writing requires the UDF filesystem. AFAIK, neither Linux nor FreeBSD have good UDF support in read-write mode, and I'm not sure if anyone is actively working on it.

A much better bet would be a LiveCD in conjunction with USB flash memory for your personal files. If you want to install apps, the new version of the SLAX-Live CD supports ovlfs (Overlay Filesystem), which lets you insert files on a read-only root filesystem. For FreeBSD, unionfs might do the trick.

Re:LiveCD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since most of the important config files are small, it should be possible to write them out to a floppy and modify the boot sequence to mount /etc/custom or something like that from /dev/fd0 if it exists. I've not done much with the live-CD distros, but I'd be surprised if someone doesn't have this feature (Knoppix?) already.

Wahoo!

[Zebra_X]

This will make an awsome Haxering platform. If you get run up on by the feds, just pull the battery out of your laptop.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[clymere]

"ObviouGuy" looks like an obvious troll. Regardless of how well an OS works, there are always going to be plenty of situations where a LiveCD proves invaluable. I would think someone savvy enough to be running BSD would know better then to spout such nonsense.

DVD??

[millahtime]

With so many of us having dvd drives, I wonder why there isn't a dvd version?? You could fit so many more of the ports on there to be tried.

Re:DVD??

[Nurseman]

With so many of us having dvd drives, I wonder why there isn't a dvd version??

I asked this in a previous dicussion on Linux CD's and the answer has to do with how the OS reads DVD's. I don't recall the exact answer, but they are not "bootable". My DVD will boot a CD, but not a DVD. It may have to do with the way the bios reads the CD's

Re:DVD??

[archen]

Like here?

besides which it's not like you don't get all the ports anyway, you just have to wait for them to download and compile, which may not be trivial for things like KDE, but out of the 9000+ ports, the vast majority take just a few minutes to install on a modern machine. it's just a 'make install' away.

Re:DVD??

[archen]

Oops, just realized you ment "live DVD" not DVD install. Nevermind =P

Re:DVD??

[Cruciform]

The Suse DVD booted just fine for me.
Is this only an issue with BIOS's older than 2 years? It's worked on both a newer system, and an old HP we had sitting around.

I wonder why...

[cesarcardoso]

...the FreeBSD LiveCD wasn't mentioned.

It's the older FreeBSD LiveCD around, a project carried by the Brazilian FreeBSD User Group.

Re:I wonder why...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you see into script source code, you can
read copyright and links.

DragonFly BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

DragonFly BSD comes on a Live CD; it's going to be the standard installation/demo/rescue disk.

Re: DragonFly BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using DragonFly BSD right now and it's pretty damned sweet. There is no OS in the world that has seen more progress in so short a time, with so few developers as this.

Still, it currently lacks kernel assisted userland threading, SMP in the GENERIC kernel, devfs, and other minor things that add up to be a big deal together. I still much prefer it to FreeBSD, and Linux doesn't even register as a blip in comparison.

DragonFly is a very snappy performer on every system I've tried it on, and it's very solid (I've recomipled the base system sources for several days at a time as a sort of stress test) and it's only getting better.

Any Linux game I've not had the source for has worked very well using the Linux compatability software, including Quake 3 arena and the latest UT.

I am very impressed!

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Anonymous Coward]

> This way, everything is stored on a read-only filesystem, even in the rare case of a BSD remote root exploit, a reboot fixes everything.

If your logs are on a RAM disk, they're gone as well...

Its a shame linux doesnt work this well

[8400_RPM]

Its a shame that regular hard installed linux cant work as well as these live cds. To get debian to pick up my usb flash drive I had to recompile the kernel. To get redhat to see it I have to mount it every time. Yet with knoppix, I just plug it in and it works...

Re:Its a shame linux doesnt work this well

[phrostie]

i have noticed that the knoppix CD will boot faster than my hardrive. even still i'm happy with it.

Re:Its a shame linux doesnt work this well

[Afrosheen]

Sounds like your previous distros of choice were outdated.

Live CD on Flash Drives???

[8400_RPM]

I've seen 512mb flash drives and even 1gb flashdrives. Has anyone tried putting a live CD on one of these? I would think it would be blazing fast.

Re:Live CD on Flash Drives???

[Bagels]

Flash isn't blazing fast by any definition of the word fast, and it's a lot more expensive than CDs - for a 1GB flash drive you could go out and buy a copy of Windows or several copies of any Linux distro. Also remember that Flash has that whole re-writing problem - if the Flash inadvertently gets used for swap space or something, it'd die in no time. Lastly, not a lot of computers boot from USB without some CD to help them along (mine certainly wouldn't), so you'd probably need a CD anyway...

Re:Live CD on Flash Drives???

[Anonymous Coward]

> Flash isn't blazing fast by any definition of the word fast,

The transfer rate is slow, but access time is very very fast.

Re:Live CD on Flash Drives???

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast - you mean like USB fast? I'd run a diseased snail using IDE against a lean mean USB 2.0 device. Guess which might win (even if I didn't spike steroids to the IDE snail)

Re:Live CD on Flash Drives???

[gl4ss]

..all the same there's few live distributions meant for such usage, though they're usually mini distributions under 100mb..

advantages over cd's are obvious, it's small enough to keep on the keychain & etc..

Re:Live CD on Flash Drives???

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash isn't blazing fast by any definition of the word fast

I think you'll find a good many things are blazing fast by the geological definition of fast. Snails, for example, are speed demons.

Er... "Now?"

[little_fluffy_clouds]

"Now the BSD world has an answer to Knoppix."

Except we've had that answer for a while - here is the first NetBSD Live CD announcement from 20th June, 2002, by Jorg Braun:

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/1.5.2/README.i 386live

Note this was the first version - a 1.6 based version was also released (with updated packages).

It's a great tool.

[mrselfdestrukt]

"If it offers a painless BSD install (the way Knoppix makes it easy to install Debian to a hard drive), this should be a popular project."
Dude, If you need Knoppix to be able to install Debian easily on your HD then you need help! If on the other hand you need a live Linux distro to use in emergencies or when a full installation is not viable/ available or required, then rather stick with your Knoppix.
The same goes for this. It is great and a lot of BSD fans will be really happy about this, but I pity those that will use it to "easily" install FreeBSD on a HD. IMHO That's just sad...
It is meant to be so much more and I think a lot of people don't understand the true functionality and usefullness of a live Linux distro or BSD. Anyway, nice!

Re:It's a great tool.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are totally out of line. If you think that the generic Debian installer is good, then you need psychiatric help. Get a life! You have absolutely no reason to feel superior because you succeeded at one generic Debian and/or FreeBSD installation. If everyone had your attitude, debian.org would have one registered user..... you.

Re:It's a great tool.

[KlaymenDK]

Dude, If you need Knoppix to be able to install Debian easily on your HD then you need help!

Yeah, so what if we do ned help? I hope you're teasing us for trying to learn this stuff. It puzzles me that it saddens you that not everybody is as elite as you. Some of us are bound to be newbies. Right?

Personally, I've tried installing Debian a few times, and given up just as many times. Half of those, I couldn't even get my (plain vanilla) keyboard to work in the installer. And I freely admit it -- I do need help, because I can't seem to figure this out by myself. I'm used to linear installations, not this flat one-level menu with no clear ending. But rather than trying to use Knoppix as a katalyst, I've just switches horses and am now fiddling with Mandrake instead.

Using a live-cd as a "template" to learn from -- and build upon -- is in essence using an "easy installer" and choosing the "default" configuration, as opposed to pulling sources via FTP and rebuilding everything to custom specs.
We may get there some day (or we may not), but if we get help for the first feeble steps, that's excellent.

Re:It's a great tool.

[Brandybuck]

Personally, I've tried installing Debian a few times, and given up just as many times.

I can install FreeBSD in my sleep, upside down and backwards looking in a mirror. But I've not once been able to endure the frustration level required to install Debian. So your experience has nothing to do with your newbieness.

p.s. I'm not knocking Debian, but it's installer is not definitely not intuitive to the Debian outsider.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[PowerBert]

I would rather run OpenBSD on my Firewall, if for no other reason than ipfw is a mess and long over due for a rewrite. IMHO OpenBSD PF is far better. If you come from a Linux background writing your firewall backwards takes a bit of getting used to though :-)

I agree with your point about running from a LIVE CD, all my servers run GRSecurity patched Linux kernels from ISOLINUX boot CDs. The init process replaces the entire OS on disk from the CDRom. I can upgrade all of my boxes by changing the CDRom and rebooting.

Yeah but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the FreeBSIE project give Bill Gates one? :)

Portage and deb-apt on FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Want Gentoo's portage and Dedian's deb-apt

http://www.freshports.org/emulators/linux_base-d eb ian/

http://www.freshports.org/emulators/linux_base-g en too-stage1/

they worked fine, thank god I won't have to use linux. It's to risky with SCO attacking, my clients and I are much safer.

And the torrent...

[IcePic]

http://people.su.se/~jj/FreeSBIE-1.0-i386.iso.torr ent

Re:And the torrent...

[Spetiam]

in link form

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[JPDeckers]

Too bad about the recently discovered DDos bug...

Uh oh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Live CD? BSD?

The puns that can be made here...

easiest way to put on Debian (or Linux at all)

[timothy]

Meefan:

under slightly older versions (I think up to Knoppix 3.2), type "sudo /usr/local/bin/knx-hdinstall"

Under newer ones, I think you only need to type "knoppix-installer", but if you type "knoppix-" and hit tab, you'll see what the actual command is if that's not quite right ;)

timothy

glad to hear it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good to see FreeBSD making some progress to catch up with Linux. This is the kind of competition that will make Linux better (and maybe even FreeBSD too!)

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[neodymium]

Normally, one logs to a remote syslog host...

There is...

[8400_RPM]

Knoppix has a DVD version. I have a copy, although its in german. I got my copy off ebay. I dont think theres anywhere where you can download it.

I boot mine from CF

[DrSkwid]

I have an in-car PC that runs FreeBSD.

It boots an EPIA 5000 from a 32Mb CF card and plays mp3s from any of the cds in the NEC 4 disk CDROM.

I hope to add a 7" lcd to it soon and see what I can make it do next.

Hopefully when my GPS mouse comes I can do some sort of homebrew routefinder

My fello 9fan Matthias has done a bit of a walkthrough with scripts for making FBSD fit in under 32Mb

Dead, LiveCD, make up your mind...

[Junior J. Junior III]

This should kick of a nice, long round of "BSD is Live" jokes.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[azuretek]

The BSD crowd isn't trying to win over people, I think that's why a FreeBSD LiveCD isn't making all the BSD guys gush with joy.

personally I am a BSD guy and a liveCD is nifty but I dont think I have a use for it, why would I use a live CD when I could just as easily install it?

Live CD Firewalls/Routers

[fygment]

There are a number of these out there. However on the Knoppix forums there have been several calls for a Knoppix that will do FW and routing as well as all the other apps. This doesn't seem to be getting answered.

Will this FreeBSD live allow the setting up of a FW and internet sharing?

Are there any live CD's that are not exclusively FW/router but rather full-fledged OS and apps with an easily configured FW/router ability?

will it boot on my machine?

[mrm677]

Tis the question.

On my cheap Athlon machine, with ECS K7S5A board, the following installers work fine:

Win2k, WinXP, NetBSD 1.5.2, Gentoo 1.4, Slackware 8.0, Redhat 7.2, Redhat 8.0, and some Debian version

The following installers fail by freezing after detecting hard drives:

FreeBSD 4.4, FreeBSD 4.5, and FreeBSD 5.2.1

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Anonymous Coward]

That was fixed a week ago - your news source is slow

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Anonymous Coward]

pf was recently imported into FreeBSD-CURRENT

Solaris LiveCD

[GodBlessTexas]

I can't really get excited about all these live CD's. A guy named Chris in Enron Broadband's Information Security Group created a Solaris LiveCD back in 2000 (before the term LiveCD either existed or was popular) that the InfoSec group used to run systems from CD. He even had one that was the absolute minimum of the OS to run IDS engines. I believe it was around 70MB total. After he hacked all that together from Solaris 2.6 and then 7, all the rest of this stuff just seems a bit anticlimactic. Don't get me wrong, as I do enjoy the variety. I wonder if Chris ever wrote up how he did it. It's probably not that hard to to do now, but back then that was cool stuff.

Re:Solaris LiveCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Some years ago, I saw a site that ran a webfarm using a customized version of Windows NT 4.0 off a CD. It was a pretty viscious hack that involved a inhouse ramdisk device driver so that NT didn't bomb when it tried to write to the registry.

Too bad this code was never made public or sent upstream to Microsoft.

Re:Solaris LiveCD

[74nova]

what does the fact that it started 4 years ago have to do with how exciting it is now? does the fact that it sucked for him to do it and its easy for me to burn it from an iso make it less useful?

im really not following your point at all. you know, these computer things i hear about were invented a long time ago. thus, i really cant get too excited about these new dual 64bit amd boards.

note to parent and mods: im not pissed, just confused. this isnt a flame. step slowly away from the mod points.

why all foreign?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed that nearly all the live cds are developed outside the United States. Is there a reason why this sort of software is more appealing in say, Germany, Italy, or Brasil than the US of A?

Maybe this is simply more verification that the American are beginning to suffer technologically from inferior mathematics and science education.

Re:why all foreign?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it's because Americans know how to make money for work they've done. It's called capitalism. As opposed to *your* socialist country where people are lucky to have medical care on demand and you probably eat horse meat, and snails.

Finally!

[Mjlner]

Personally I use GNU/Linux frequently and I love it. I have never chosen not to use FreeBSD, but all my machines have Debian GNU/Linux more or less automatically. For a long while, I've been wanting to try out FreeBSD, but haven't had the spare machine to install it on. Now I don't need one...

DOS is easy to install to

[bogie]

Just stick the first floppy, partition, and your done. Easy as pie.

Your probably talking about using it as a server and your right, if you follow the instructions any *nix isn't too difficult to get initially installed.

My point is for the distro-of-the-week, dual-booting, desktop nix using, Slashdot majority who will probably need help once their beyond the basic initial install. For them the idea that any BSD is a "painless install" is a bit of a misnomer. The real test is getting X working at the proper resolution and refresh rate. Getting all of your multimedia apps running. And getting your printer, digital camera, scanner, and palm pilot working on your PC. In that respect unfortunately the BSD's and many linux distros simply fall down. Personally I think its worth the effort, but you have to be realistic about who is reading your comments and what they might have to go through to get a perfectly working desktop. That painless install you promised just turned into their biggest nightmare.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[PowerBert]

Thats great news!!

Rollling your own

[Cruciform]

As far as Linux goes I'm a relative newb.
I can edit configuration files, install packages from source, use SSH, and set up Apache/PHP and MySQL. That doesn't sound too bad at first, but I still don't have the ability to troubleshoot or utilize the OS to the degree that I can with Windows, simply due to familiarity.

What I'm wondering is if customizing a distro is fairly straightforward, or a massive headache even for the experienced.

I want to be able to boot up a LiveCD that has a collection of Care Sheets for various pets and livestock (that part should be simple), as well as a database that can be used for husbandry and breeding purposes.

I don't know whether putting a live database on a pre-canned OS is a good idea, due to security issues or whatnot. I would assume that restricting access to the db to local accounts would be the way to go, etc. etc.

Anyone have experience building their own, and want to share the experience?

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[endx7]

If there's a remote root exploit, rebooting is merely going to make an attacker wait five minutes and then re-run the exploit. A better solution is a CD-RW disk in a CD-ROM drive -- you can always reboot into a clean system, but if there are security issues, you can remove the disk, fix the necessary bits, and then reboot.

CD-RWs are hardly cost efficient, especially if we are dealing with something where we only rarely make changes.

no business card, but...

[smartfart]

I've had a NetBSD 1.6 LiveCD sitting in my briefcase for about a year now. Why are these people claiming to be the first ones to do it?

Re:no business card, but...

[Brandybuck]

Not having used the NetBSD LiveCD, I may be off base here. But your typical "live" CD is a much different beast than your Knoppix/FreeSBIE style CD. The former are meant for emergency recovery and stuff. No one uses them on a day to day basis for the desktop needs. On the other hand, I can use Knoppix or FreeSBIE as my primary desktop OS. In fact, with a USB thumb drive, I don't even NEED a harddrive anymore!

Of course, even Knoppix isn't new. I was using Slackware '96 off of a CD with a floppy for /etc and /home.

How easy is install in a multiboot scenerio?

[jonadab]

I tried to install OpenBSD (also FreeBSD and NetBSD) and was unable to get past
the disklabel process. Now, there are some things about my setup that may have
been making it hard, but in the same scenerio I was able to get other systems
installed (e.g., Mandrake, BeOS), and I failed to get BSD working. One of the
things I suspect may have been a problem is that I was trying to put it on my
"spare" partition that I was keeping open at the time for fooling around with
installing various things just for a few days to play with. (Then I'd install
something different after a while...) This partition was something like the
third primary partition on the IDE secondary master driver, or something like
that, and was probably past the 1024th cyllinder. Also I needed to keep the
primary master MBR for PowerBoot (a third-party boot manager) and so could not
put the BSD bootloader there.

Now, this was over a year ago, and I intend to try again soon, hoping that some
things have been ironed out in newer versions. A FreeBSD LiveCD sure sounds
like a good opportunity for me. I'll be giving one a try.

x86 Only?

[Blinkslowly]

I have a Powerbook12 and have not gotten one LiveCd to boot properly. Gentoo has come the closest ,but it too craps out.

Re:x86 Only?

[ph43thon]

yeah, I was wondering if it would have an ISO compiled for powerpc. I usually borrow a friend's cd burner.. and he no use FreeBSD. Also, FreeSBIE's page didn't even really say what was on the LiveCD.. oh well.
p

ALLRIGHT!!

[dos4who]

Now I can finally make use of all those Knoppix FriSBEEs I've burned over the years...

~m

right market?

[rnilz]

This is definitly a good thing. I'm just a little curious if this will be a success like the other live cds out there. In my opinion (so I'm probably wrong) live cds are there to convince potential *desktop* users to go for their distribution or, in this case, OS. Thing that strikes me about the various *BSDs (okay, really I can only speak for FreeBSD here, it being the only one I had installed on my machine for more than a week) is that they are a lot like debian: Very powerful and stable in their own right (so ideal for server use) but not exactly the most user friendly desktop OS out there. I'm just thinking that for someone concidering a distribution/OS change based wholly on live cds, this might not tickle their bellies. But then again, I haven't really tried the cd yet, so who knows. It's still good to see *BSD going into the desktop market too now.

FreeBSD for newbies

[xot]

I havent tried FreeSBIE so i would'nt know how easy or tough iut is to get a copy up or running.But what I do know is the getting a relatively standard box running FreeBSD is very ease.
I would recommend all newbies who are trying out a unix OS for the first time to start with FreeBSD.There are a few reasons for this :

1. The installer (sysinstall) is ver easy and self explanatory.
2. FreeBSD gives you a lot of options in terms of how you want to install and from where.It can even pick up a the installation from a dos partition.(from c:)
3. The documentation is amazing.You will love the handbook.All my questions about the installation were answered by the handbook itself, i had to look nowhere else.
4. For any non-standard issues theres a very active FreeBSD mailing list.

For all the above reasons,i think FreeSBIE should be even smoother than a normal FreeBSD install. Looking forward to givin it a spin, guess i dun have to try knoppix now ;-)

Maybe I can help some...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

I recently moved all my machines (4, not that much) to Linux and here is the choices I finished with :

B) Gateway : astaro.org
Nice (very nice) standalone firewall with statefull packet inspection.

You get a very secure firewall, with a free licence if under 10 protected ips.

I'm using it as firewall, mail relay and DMZ control for my small webserver.
updates are downloaded automatically and it's really, really stable.

It also includes (for a fee) a good email antivirus.

Nice solution, web based control, didn't get a problem since I put it on. It's just take 2-3 hours to get your firewall rules right when you're a noob like me 8)

C) I'm using E-Smith (Mitel) (contribs.org) specialized distro.

Can be used as gateway too, but I only use the web server (apache), mail server (The Horde frontend for a web access + pop3 etc), sql, etc...
If my web server gets compromised, I won't lose Internet access at the same time...

I was willing to put it as local fileserver too, but I took the "serious" path and it is on the dmz doing only web and mail. Alas Mitel dropped the project, but the people at contribs.org keep on develloping the server (wich is based on Redhat 7.2, btw)
and it just works...

A) Knoppix Cluster on my desktop (Dual PIII 1ghz) and on the file server (Duron 1.3). It's debian, it's nice and stable and you can do everything debian... + I GOT MY OWN CLUSTER TO PLAY WITH 8) (ok, a smally cluster with just 2 nodes and 3 cpus, but MINE !!! MINE !!! My preciouuuuus clussssster 8)

Being debian, all open sources IDE are easily accessibles, so for dev jobs...

D) Can't help you there. I think to remember some special distros going foe Sony laptops (gentoo ?) but I can't be certain at the moment.

My goal was to be able to control everything without using my shitty mechanical KVM, so web-based interfaces are in both E-Smith and Astaro. The fileserver I control with ssh and Webmin, until I understand how to get a vnc server running...

The uptime for all my machines is 28 days for now, I had everything off to install an ups last month. Other than that, I didn't reboot for quite some time...

Have a look at astaro for it is really a good distro, and if you find another web/mail/sql server with a good and easy management solution to replace e-smith, I'm interested too 8)

They've had one forever

[jtkooch]

If you download the full CD set or purchase a book that comes with one, the 3rd CD is a live system disk.

My quick review

[WD]

Neat concept, but definately rough around the edges. (Especially compared to Knoppix)

I am writing this from the Live CD using Firefox, so that at least says something. But here are some issues I ran in to: (Keep in mind I've never used FreeBSD before)

1. The Live CD doesn't boot properly on my system. After churning away for a while, it finally gets to the boot splash screen so I can't see what's going on. Then after hitting a few keys I got to the console and it displayed an error:
Mounting Root from cd9660:acd0
Root Mount Failed: 5
mountroot>

Using a little trial and error I was able to get the boot process to continue by typing:
cd9660:cd2
It appears that the Live CD got confused along the way as to what CD drive is which. I have two IDE-attached and one SCSI-attached CD devices in my machine.

2. I was presented with screens to select my KB Language and Layout. No biggie here, but just more interaction than Knoppix requires.

3. At the end of the boot process, I was presented with a root console prompt, and the tail end of a list of 10 items. I couldn't figure out how to scroll up the screen to read the list. PageUp, Shift + PageUP, + PageUP... I tried a bunch.

4. One of the last items in the list explained how to get into X (by typing xinit). So I got into X with XFCE fine. But the refresh rate is 60Hz and I fear my eyes are going to start bleeding pretty soon.

5. XFCE has auto-hide toolbars on the top and bottom of the screen. I find these quite distracting.

That's about it so far. It's neat to be able to play around with an OS that lives on a CD, but I'm wondering how useful this project is. Knoppix is a slick way of showing what a free non-MS operating system can do. Pop in the CD, boot it up, and you'll end up in a nice graphical interface with programs to try out. Plus it's extremely handy to use as a "rescue" CD for systems whose operating systems will not boot for various reasons.

But where does FreeSBIE fit in? As a rescue CD for those who know BSD well but not Linux? To show off how FreeBSD can almost be as nice a desktop as as Linux (Knoppix)? If FreeBSD is aimed as a server OS ("The Power To Serve"), how useful is a Live CD?

I don't mean to sound too negative here. It does seem like a neat project. I'm just failing to see its niche.

Re:My quick review

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the scroll lock key, and then the arrow keys to scroll the console...

Re:My quick review

[ph43thon]

it would seem to me that a LiveCD in all cases is good for reparing a system if something has gone horribly wrong.. like a Super Rescue Floppy. So, it's good for system administrators I guess. Also, fun for college students and the like to go into computer labs and boot from cd to goof around. Oh, and the fact that Knoppix doesn't allow bootup support for multiple languages isn't really a plus IMO. Unless, of course, you only use the LiveCD to demo FreeBSD.. but then you can just use the toolset to make one that boots straight in. Then again, I can't tell that they have the toolset available at the moment.

p

Close...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its pkg_add actually. But don't bother installing bash, just set your shell to ksh, it has tab completion and everything in a fraction of the memory usage of bash.

Re:Close...

[anthonyrcalgary]

but... but...

all my scripts...

For that tiny slice of ground of stuff that's too trivial for Python and too big to do manually, Bash scripts are the best way to go for most things. Unless you're really short on memory, it's worth it. An OpenBSD system with all the defaults and no X takes up about 20 megs (I don't even know how much of that was bash). With the extravagant stuff I've done because I had a 256 mb DIMM with nothing better to do, I'm up to 30.

It's like KDE. Sure it's a hog, but who cares? Memory is cheap, and effort is not. Fluff is nice sometimes.

Why BSD?

[WD]

What would a BSD card get you that a Linux one can't?

Re:Why BSD?

[mph]

What would a BSD card get you that a Linux one can't?

If you're trying to fix a broken FreeBSD box, and FreeBSD is the operating system you use everyday and know well, I think you'd rather have a FreeBSD boot disk.

Addendum :

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Just forgot the specs of the machines and the network, so you get an idea of what you need...

All together I have 5 pcs and an Xbox on the network

Internet Access is Xdsl 4Mbits and pppoe.

Firewall is a PII 450 with 280 Mo ram. CPU usage under 2% average, so you can use a smaller machine if you want...

The Webserver with E-smith is a PII350 with 370Mo ram, but it will run from a P200-128Mo and up.

The fileserver is a Duron 1.3+256 Mo ram, 4+80Gigs on a raid card and a smallish 4Gig hdd for the system...more than enough to stream video and music to the xbox 8)

good luck and have fun 8)

FreeBSE - Bovine Spongiform variant

[billmoss]

No one's mentioned the FreeBSE CD from the UK. I've had it my briefcase for over a year now, and I really can't remember how many times it's saved me.

Re:FreeBSE - Bovine Spongiform variant

[insensitive claude]

BSE can be found in Canada as well...

Knoppix + Cluster Knoppix...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Debian based wih KDE as default manager...

Installing Nvidia driver using a nice script from a guy called Kanotix (the name of his cluster distro, so google for it...)

Printer conf using the tools given with Knoppix : 2 minutes

Digital Camera/Scanner/usb, same 5 minutes as long as your camera works as a usb drive, much much harder otherwise...

Palm : open a Midnight Commander session under root, go to /dev/ttyS0 (or S1 if you put your old palm Vx on com1) and change the rights so that everybody got read-write-execute rights (=> quick and dirty!) install or use KDE/Gnome default palm tools... 5 minutes or less.

The real problems will come when you try to use the all latest hardware for wich no drivers/docs have been made. For that matter, I have no idea how to use a USB connected palm with my debian, but I'll certainly learn once I get one (donation welcome 8)

Oh yes... Using the latest knoppix, you should be able to run and install kernel 2.6 in a quite painless way...nice, ain't it ?

I Never got a cd-rw to boot...

[da5idnetlimit.com]

So maybe I'm just plain stupid or something, but I have never been able to get my machine to boot from rw media... maybe it's my player, or my machine is just as dumb as I am...

Correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's disk #2 that is the FreeBSD Live CD, not #3. The third disk contains additional precompiled packages and the CVS repository.

You are missing (one of) the points!

[gosand]

Dude, If you need Knoppix to be able to install Debian easily on your HD then you need help! If on the other hand you need a live Linux distro to use in emergencies or when a full installation is not viable/ available or required, then rather stick with your Knoppix.

Wow, are you missing it! How many CDs are there in a Debian distro? In any distro? LiveCDs are 1 cd.

LiveCDs are fantastic as emergency disks, but they are even better as installation disks. You get to SEE and USE the system before you install it. I have considered switching to Debian a couple of times (mainly because of apt-get), but it is a much bigger deal to backup, install, and try it out than to boot it and try it. Forget using a spare machine. Why would I want to spend hours when I could be up and running in 2 minutes?

These things are fantastic, and will only improve over time. The only thing a distro offers that these don't is configurability during the install, where you pick and choose what you want to install. But that is a minor point IMO, and will be fixed if the need is really there.

I have several different LiveCDs, and you know how many times I have used them for emergencies? None. I have performed several installs off of them though. Why would you deny one of the major benefits of these things?

Re:You are missing (one of) the points!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use apt-get with RPM based systems, and it makes life much easier. go to www.freshrpms.net and get 'apt-for-rpm'

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to burn another CD-R so the original is available if needed. Media cost is so trivial the time to burn is worth less than another CD.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Anonymous Coward]

This way, everything is stored on a read-only filesystem, even in the rare case of a BSD remote root exploit, a reboot fixes everything.

pf can have tables modified at runtime and set as persistant, so you can automatically block an ip address in response to an attack detection.

No writeable filesystem means no persistant tables. An attacker just needs to know how to make your machine reboot and two ip addresses.

Of course I suppose nothing stops you from having a hybrid system, where your binaries and base config files are on the CD but you still have some writeable storage.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[billmoss]

What are some real-world situations where this would be useful, it seems cool... but where is it really useful? Just curious.

I notice no webserver or browser are included (at least in the file dist list, maybe I missed it).

Also, is it possible to install packages for FreeSBIE while running it on a CDR? Does it access the HD at all? Can it?

What do you mean ...FreeBSD ?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the trolls told me BSD is dead ...WHAT ! you mean whatever the trolls say are not tru ?

One use.

[Raven42rac]

Throw it in an extra machine if you have an "oh shit" moment, like a dead box.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is "dishing"?

Now we can see if has the needed drivers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without commiting first. :)

Re:Netcraft chimes in...

[metamatic]

I must admit, I laughed at the name "FreeBSD Live". I'm disappointed that the trolls couldn't come up with a wittier piece of trollery given material like that.

Can't wait for the live, OpenBSD based distro

[bondjamesbond]

That would be bitchin.

Better Use: DNS Servers

[cjsnell]

I rarely change my DNS tables, so live CDs make perfect nameservers for me. I can have an ISO image ready to go with FreeBSD, djbdns, and our tinydns data files on it. On the rare occasion that I need to make a change, I just mount the ISO file as a filesystem, make the change, and re-burn the image on a $0.50 CD-R.

I would even consider using such a setup as a webserver, having the system mount a /content directory via NFS.

Chris

Yes, it did

[nonameisgood]

I am running on the FreeBSIE live disk now, on a ECS K7S5A v.1 board.

I did have to pop in a PS/2 mouse (having been using the same 3 button generic serial for years in this box), but it works great.

I use Knoppix as a recovery disk when I screw up a config file or something else while tinkering and have found it to be very useful. I also supply copies to Win weenies when they ask about Linux.

So much for uptime:

[MMHere]

panic: page fault
uptime: 1s
Press key on console to reboot...

This on my dual Athlon system. Is there a problem with multi-CPU support?

Or perhaps an Athlon-ism has bitten me?

I guess I wasn't really that interested in trying BSD anyway...

Re:So much for uptime:

[ratfynk]

choose kernel to smp, you need to pass it to inet. But I guess a gui free environment is too hard. It is an ncurses based gui. Expand the kernel config options to support your amd's

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[cperciva]

CD-RWs are hardly cost efficient, especially if we are dealing with something where we only rarely make changes.

True, but a red herring. With a system which costs >$100, it doesn't matter if you boot off a $0.15 disk or a $0.50 disk. A CD-RW has one major advantage: When you need to re-image, you've got a disk available at hand. The last thing you want to do when updating systems for security fixes is worry about if you've got enough CDRs or if you need to drive off to the store to buy another spindle.

Yes, of course you *should* always keep enough spare CDRs on hand to re-image all your CD-boot machines, but there's a reason why "should" and "do" are different words. :)

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[endx7]

CD-RWs are hardly cost efficient, especially if we are dealing with something where we only rarely make changes.

True, but a red herring. With a system which costs >$100, it doesn't matter if you boot off a $0.15 disk or a $0.50 disk. A CD-RW has one major advantage: When you need to re-image, you've got a disk available at hand. The last thing you want to do when updating systems for security fixes is worry about if you've got enough CDRs or if you need to drive off to the store to buy another spindle.

In my experience, CD-RWs are very unreliable, so for me it seems like it's hardly worth paying for CD-RWs when I expect them to fail consistantly (thus forcing me to buy more anyway). Also, it seems like a good idea to have older versions of your cds handy just in case (like the fix is worse than the problem and you can live with the problem until you have a better fix) . Also, CD-RWs take longer to burn (although, admittably, driving to the store usually takes longer).

Gimmie more...

[PHanT0]

I want a bootable-CD based BSD Cluster... anyone else?

Re:Gimmie more...

[Anonymous Coward]

thats called a funeral precession

Obviously, it's the license.

[Dwonis]

Linux has had live CDs for several years, and BSD is finally catching up. Obviously, it's the BSD license that's holding back BSD and keeping Linux technically superior to BSD in all aspects.

;-)

Portable servers.

[zaunuz]

If you are moving around alot (like me), and want to run a web-server (like me), this is probably the sollution: Visit a friend, ask to borow one of his/her unused PCs for a day or two, pop it in. The only problem is local storage: Some web-servers, for instance those who run php/cgi/whatever to generate info stored locally need somewhere to store that info. If its not much, you can probably just use a floppy, but if there's more than 1.44Mb, then youve got a problem. Making FreesBIE compatible with those USB-drives would be a great idea.

Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I get support for FreeSBIE?
I couldnt get find any fourms and the doc's are all in italiano.

Re:FreeBSD is a solid OS

[Rick the Red]

It's a varient of "fishing," which is a varient of "trolling." Or something.

Read Only

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest issue is your database will be read only.

You could set up as many or as few users as you wanted.

Assuming the intent is to use this as a reference book, that you boot up on what ever PC hardware is handy that changes your security picture. The security would be where you store the CD when not in use. If you're concerned about network access, leave the network disabled.

If you need to make the DB network accessible, you probably want to look at a more permanent solution.