How to build your own BSD distribution?

[balanga]

time script freebsd-buildworld_$(date +"%y%m%d%H%M").log sh -c 'cd /usr/src && make buildworld'
or
time script freebsd-buildworld_$(date +"%y%m%d%H%M").log make -C /usr/src buildworld

Here's the result of my script:-

chmod 444 freebsd.submit.cf

--------------------------------------------------------------
>>> World build completed on Mon Aug 21 22:59:51 BST 2023
>>> World built in 42602 seconds, ncpu: 4
--------------------------------------------------------------

Script done, output file is freebsd-buildworld_2308211109.log
    42602.46 real     40940.87 user      1541.93 sys

100,000 lines of output.

 

[astyle]

100,000 lines of output.

Easily verified like this:

% cat freebsd-buildworld_2308211109.log | wc -l
100,000

 

[balanga]

Easily verified like this:

% cat freebsd-buildworld_2308211109.log | wc -l
100,000

Or even

wc -l freebsd-buildworld_2308211109.log

 

[blind0ne]

Says someone on FreeBSD forums.

free, free is just a fried potatoes in ff;.

 

[dr3mro]

it would be better to use your time for something valuable like creating a bootstrap script that replicate your setup after vanilla freeBSD install. That would be a better use of resources and easier to maintain on the long run and you can add scripts for tweaks according to your machine.
Creating too many Distributions did not do well for GNU/Linux. you can create a tar.gz of all needed configs and a script to deploy it post install or better create a repository to host some binaries that are missing from pkg and already in ports.
you can also create a git repo that the user clone and tweak for his need this execute the install script.
because if you created a distribution like GNU/Linux you would need to maintain too many versions (12,13 and 14 in a few days)
look at Ghost BSD its always behind to provide the latest version, for some people this is a deal breaker.

 

[grahamperrin]

… always behind …

No, GhostBSD is often enough ahead of the FreeBSD-RELEASE curve, in more ways than one.

ericbsd

 

[unitrunker]

A simpler alternative to creating a whole new FreeBSD inspired OS it to identify what ports / packages you like most and then create a meta-port that bundles those together. From the end user's perspective, the effect is the same and users can still come here for base system support.

Example - TrueOS - a FreeBSD derivative - is gone but many of the packages that made up TrueOS remain. Look for "lumina" prefixed names in the ports tree. Anyone wanting to retain the look and feel of TrueOS can still do so.

Example from Dan Langille:

And one port to install them all!

Yeah, sorry, it's a cheap title...

www.freebsddiary.org

 

[grahamperrin]

My use of YouTube is increasingly rare, but this one caught my eye for various reasons:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVobPc1PR08


It's partly relevant to this topic. From <https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/18bhwo7/-/kcr56f9/>:

Many people have written about release(7). Much of what's written is stiflingly verbose, as a result I had never tuned in to it. This video shows how how quick and simple it can be.

 

[astyle]

And we will soon hear the torrent of complaints about sendmail being gone in 14.0 for those who weren't paying attention.
I was paying attention but I'll get the ball rolling.

# fetch https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.0/FreeBSD-14.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso
# mv ./FreeBSD-14.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso ./sendmail_complaints.torrent
# cat ./sendmail_complaints.torrent | hexdump -v -e '/1 "%u\n"' | awk '{ split("4,5,7,11",a,","); for (i = 0; i < 1; i += 0.0001) printf("%08X\n", 100*sin(1046*exp((a[$1 % 8]/12)*log(2))*i)) }' | xxd -r -p | aplay -c 2 -f S32_LE -r 24000

( /usr/local/bin/aplay requires presence of audio/alsa-utils).

This is how you can actually hear the 'torrent of complaints' that drhowarddrfine is talking about