[OpenIndiana-discuss] Buildable distro?

[Jim Klimov]

On 2013-02-07 00:12, Ian Collins wrote:
> Reginald Beardsley wrote:
>> Why can't a custom distro be just a disk image created w/ dd dumped
>> into a slice which is as large or larger?  Is there so much metadata
>> stored that this won't work anymore?  If that's the case, we ought to
>> be able to script fixing it if we know where it is.
>
> Well it could if every target machine was identical...
>
>> The LiveCD is great, but there are problems it doesn't solve and
>> sometimes what you really need is just a copy of something that works.
>
> In that case, if you have a reference system, half of a mirrored boot
> drive would do the trick.

Perhaps that is why many vendors distribute "demos" or even usable
deployments of their software as preconfigured VMs. I think some
ready-to-go VirtualBox image would be nice - except that in too
many cases VM performance in disk I/O - at which a build is very
intensive - is known to be abysmal. Like 40 hours instead of 1-5.

Still, with zones being independent of hardware, it might be possible
to transfer a preconfigured zone with compilers and checked-out
source code gates from such a VM image onto a physical OI machine.
Just update the gates with hg or git, and start the build on bare
metal :)

I think someone on the lists (Nick?) already proposed that, in way
of distributing ZFS-send images of such prepared zones. I wonder
where that led, and if any such deployments are ready to download?..

Regarding a disk image - it should work, after you solve the two
problems: of drivers (but all known to man might be cobundled,
like in a Windows distro) and of rpool import which currently
relies on the device-path string saved in the label, unlike any
other pools on the system. This is what makes it hard to switch
between SATA and Legacy-IDE modes in BIOS, transfer boot disks
between different hardware servers or just plop them onto a
different connector, dual-boot an installation on metal and in
VM (from partition), etc. The latter problem I really hate :)

//Jim