installing a package on LIVE CD or USB image ?

Dear BSD Friends ,

i am afraid don't know if it is possible to install a package such like "libmotif" from the freebsd library to :

1. a running LIVE CD version 12.1 AMD 64 release or

2. a running LIVE USB STICK version 12.1 AMD 64 release ( the same image as CD) or

3. a running MEMSTICK.IMG version of the same.

Is there a difference ?

or is this only possible from an harddrive installed version ? so why memstick.img ???

Kindly Regards
SM
 
It is possible, providing the USB disk and image is not read-only, of course. I've not used memstick images.

Using a physical, Read Only CD is, of course, impossible.

So it depends on the media and the set up of the live USB.

For example, for FuryBSD (from their website):

"FuryBSD is compact using a hybrid live DVD / USB image. This lets you use FuryBSD on-the-fly as a portable OS for sensitive work, a way to test your hardware, or to perform a hardware install directly from the live image. "

Disclaimer: I've never used FuryBSD. I cannot attest to its usability.
 
You could actually modify a FreeBSD memstick installer by mounting your installer stick from another computer.
Mount it and change /etc/fstab from RO to RW.
Then you could install packages to it.

An easier way is to install FreeBSD onto a USB stick. Then you have a portable FreeBSD installation that can be used the same as a hard disk installation.
One little problem if you create this from the memstick installer to another USB stick is the drive order will be wrong in /etc/fstab.
da0 will be the installer and da1 will be the target disk.
When you are done installing FreeBSD and remove the memstick installer then the disk order will be screwed up.
It will be trying to boot from da1 which is not correct.

So you must modify your FreeBSD USB based installation to reflect the proper disk.
You can use FreeBSD disk labels to overcome this problem or at the end of your FreeBSD installer there is a chance to modify your new installation. Fire up an editor and modify /etc/fstab and change da1 to da0.
 
This will create a bootable USB NanoBSD.
You can no longer see the pkg files as shown. You can use pkg fetch -d to retrieve packages.
 
I am sadly not knowledgeable enough yet to give you an exact howto but from what i've seen it should be possible even with CD media as long as you don't need to have your changes persist across reboots and have some spare RAM.

The idea is to mount a tmpfs somewhere and then layer it over / using unionfs so writes end up in the tmpfs while still allowing reads from the live system media.
 
hi all ,

final question in that matter is :

is it possible to cinfigure a NanoBsd USB Stick from a FreeBSD LIVE running medium or....
is it only possible from an already installed FreeBSD OS ??

this go more mobile theese days.

SM
 
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