[Cu-wireless] to-do list for netbsd bootable cd-rom

[David Young]

Zach & Ralph,

Here is the to-do list I have kept as I produced the bootable CD-ROM.
The list is written in my own short-hand, but it should give you
the general flavor of what I have been doing. I am going to dedicate
myself for the next few days to producing convenient scripts and more
intelligible instructions.

The Web page that got me started making a bootable CD-ROM was this one:

  http://www.daemonnews.org/200106/bootable_CD.html

I have only skimmed this page; it seems to contain similar information
as the first:

  http://www.bsdtoday.com/2002/March/Features646.html

[x] Add to /etc/fstab entries for writable memory filesystems /etc,
    /home, /var, /tmp. Set their sizes right (PITA). See 'man 4 mfs'.

[x] In /etc/rc.d, change mountcritlocal to REQUIRE mountcritmem instead
    of root.  Actually, change every script that REQUIREs root to REQUIRE
    mountcritmem. See /etc/rc, 'man rcorder'.

[x] In /etc/rc.d, add mountcritmem which REQUIREs root. If /cdboot exists,
    mountcritmem mounts /var, /home, /tmp, and /etc (/etc last, so that
    the /etc/fstab is available until the last moment!) and extracts
    /cdrom/mfs.tgz in /. Otherwise, mountcritmem does nothing. See
    'man rcorder' and the daemonnews.org article.

[x] Turn off swap; disable warnings by setting no_swap=YES in
    /etc/rc.conf.  See 'man rc.conf'.

[x] On a hard drive, change rc.conf, defaults/rc.conf to list /usr
    in a new variable, critical_filesystems_beforemem, as a filesystem
    it is critical to mount before preparing the memory filesystems,
    reason being that pax needs executables in /usr/bin/. (This is not
    necessary on the CD, since /usr and / are on the same partition,
    thus the executables pax needs in /usr/bin/ are always available.)

[x] In /etc/daily.conf, turn off most the cron stuff that will bog down
    with the slowness of the CD-ROM, or produce enormous outputs that
    will fill the memory filesystems.

[ ] Ditto with other cron .conf files.

[ ] To conserve memory disk, keep fewer logs, and rotate them more
    rapidly. Change /etc/newsyslog.conf for this.

[ ] Figure out what to do about /root. Another mfs? Link to /home/root ?
    Let's just forget about it, since it hasn't been a problem.

[x] Create /etc/myname (is this ordinarily done at install?), which is
    the file from which /etc/rc reads the hostname.

[x] Make sure /dev/console exists in /dev. If it does not, all hell will
    break loose at boot. IIRC, init will go haywire, trying to create
    /dev/console and other device special files.

[x] add to /etc/dhclient.conf 'send option dhcp-client-identifier =
    "cu-wireless";' and 'request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, routers,
    domain-name, domain-name-servers, host-name;'

[x] edit /etc/rc.d/ttys so that it does not chmod any ttys in /dev

[x] In /etc/rc.d, add createifs that REQUIREs mountcritmem.  In createifs,
    if /cdboot exists, create /etc/ifconfig.* from select interfaces in
    'ifconfig -l' (e.g., ep?, wi?, fxp?, an?). Link to exemplar files
    (e.g., ifconfig.ep.xmpl, ifconfig.wi.xmpl, ifconfig.xmpl---is
    wildcard) when they exist. Make rc.d/network depend upon
    rc.d/createifs. Possibly rewrite arguments to dhclient?  Or rewrite
    /etc/rc.d/dhclient? Or /etc/dhclient.conf? Study some more. See
    'man ifconfig.if' and 'man rcorder'.

[x] Install screen, encap, Zebra, PERL, Python, vim, wget.

[x] Link /usr/pkg/bin/python22 to /usr/pkg/bin/python

[x] Install gdbm, py-gdbm in anticipation of installing the rudimentary
    database program.

[x] Start sshd at boot.

[x] Create a small kernel (suitable for a floppy) w/ cd0a boot device,
    dyoung_wi_tiny.

[x] Re-enable pseudo-device rnd in small kernel because sshd needs it.

[ ] Write templates for zebra.conf and ospfd.conf. Create them at
    boot from parameters in dhcp response and in database response.

[ ] Write /etc/rc.d/zebra and /etc/rc.d/ospfd, the second dependent on
    the first.

[ ] Add to rc.conf zebra=YES and ospfd=YES.

[x] Change /netbsd configuration to mount root from cd0a.

[ ] In bootloader, change to CONSDEV_AUTO serial policy for field
    diagnosis of headless stations. See boot_console man page. Basically,
    I want the opportunity to diddle with the box starting at boot whether
    it has a monitor and keyboard attached or not. Presumably I will
    have a laptop w/ serial port on-site more often than I will have a
    display and keyboard. That's certainly been my experience up 'til now.

[x] Take /usr out of CD-ROM's /etc/fstab. Change / partition name to cd0a.
    Change / fstype to cd9660. Add read-only option. Add extatt option,
    just in case (see man mount_cd9660).

For every CD-ROM:

[ ] Create floppy image like so

	mdconfig /dev/md0d 2880 &
	newfs -T floppy /dev/md0a
	mount /dev/md0a /mnt/floppy/
	# netbsd comes from sys/arch/i386/compile/dyoung_wi_tiny
	gzip < netbsd > /mnt/floppy/netbsd.gz
	umount /mnt/floppy/
	mknod /dev/rmd0a c 24 0
	/usr/mdec/installboot -f /usr/mdec/biosboot.sym /dev/rmd0a
	cd $ROOT # $ROOT is the root of the filesystem we will write to CD-ROM
	dd if=/dev/md0a of=cdboot/boot.img bs=1024 count=1440
	# insert floppy disk
	fdformat -f /dev/fd0a
	dd if=cdboot/boot.img of=/dev/fd0a bs=1024 count=1440

  alternatively, use vnconfig

	dd if=/dev/zero of=cdboot/boot.img bs=1024 count=1440
	vnconfig vnd0 cdboot/boot.img
	disklabel -w -r /dev/vnd0c floppy
	newfs -T floppy /dev/vnd0a
	mount /dev/vnd0a /mnt/floppy/
    # gzip, umount, installboot, ..., skip dd of md0a, fdformat, dd to
    # floppy disk.

  to update boot.img,

	vnconfig vnd0 boot.img
	disklabel -w -r /dev/vnd0c floppy
	mount /dev/vnd0a /mnt/floppy
	gzip < netbsd > /mnt/floppy/netbsd.gz
	umount /mnt/floppy
  )

[ ] Add /netbsd to CD-ROM. Better be the same as the boot kernel.
    kvm_mkdb requires it. Do not compress it, kvm_mkdb does not grok
    netbsd.gz.

[ ] Create /dev/log by 'ln -sf /var/run/log /dev/log'. Otherwise,
    /etc/rc.d/syslogd or something will try and fail to create it at boot.

[ ] On the CD, change the last columns of /etc/fstab to 0 0 throughout.

[ ] Add 'config netbsd root on cd0a type cd9660' to kernel config.

[ ] Create CD image w/ floppy image cdboot/boot.img for boot. It is important
    to use -R instead of -r. In directory ~dyoung/cu-wireless/,

    mkhybrid -o boot.iso -b cdboot/boot.img -c boot.catalog -a \
    -l -J -R -L ./station-boot-cd

[ ] Clean up /home before producing /cdboot/mfs.tgz.

[ ] Create /cdboot/mfs.tgz by

  # remove /dev files cd9660 cannot handle with a command similar to this,
  # but NOT this (see the tail -600? suppose there aren't 600 files to
  # delete, in your case?)

  ls -l | grep '^[cbps]' | sort -k 6 -n | tail -600 | \
    awk '{ print $10; }' | xargs rm

  [ -d /cdboot ] || mkdir /cdboot || bomb "mkdir /cdboot FAILED"
  # $ROOT is the root of the filesystem we will write to CD-ROM
  cd $ROOT ; pax -wzf cdboot/mfs.tgz var etc home

Todo once:

[ ] Write scripts to produce ISO & floppy images containing the
    development environment. Create a devel environment manifest,
    files.devel.

[ ] Write script to install binary packages to the CD in its
    development environment.

[ ] Produce a script that will download pkgsrc into the development
    environment? (Do not include pkgsrc on the CD-ROM w/o doing a make
    clean or make distclean first!)

[ ] Write scripts to write CD-ROM to hard drive and set up devel
    environment. Add a directory /devel to CD. Write this to hard drive,
    turning CD inside-out so that /devel encloses the CD contents (in
    directory station-boot-cd) instead of the other way around.

[ ] Report bug where cd9660 will not handle minor node numbers greater
    than 512*1024 on block/character devices.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Engineering from the Right Brain
dyoung at onthejob.net     Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933