FreeSBIE + FreeBSD on the same CD/DVD?

Hi,

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I haven't
found it in the online FAQ document.

I would like to put FreeSBIE and the "official" FreeBSD
distribution (i.e. install and fixit) on the same DVD,
so that both of them can be booted alternatively.

I'm aware of a few problems that are involved, and I
think those can be solved.  But before I'm spending a
lot of time and efforts, I would like to hear if anybody
else has tried that before, and if there are any other
problems to be expected which I'm not aware of yet.

First, a boot manager is required.  I've tried several
ones including GRUB and GAG, but none of them was able
to chainload eltorito boot loaders from ISO9660 images.
So I had to write my own one, which works well.  It has
already been used for a DVD that includes all four BSD
systems (Free, Net, Open, DF).  If you're interested,
here are some docs:

http://www.secnetix.de/products/eltoro/

There's also a (hypothetical) boot script for a mixed
FreeBSD + FreeSBIE disc (as explained above), but it's
just theory so far.  :-)

(Of course, a different approach would be to boot both
systems from the same /boot/beastie.4th menu, but that
would be more difficult, not easy to maintain, and less
flexible.  Also, I don't want FreeSBIE to be only a
menu entry in the FreeBSD boot loader.  I would rather
prefer both to be on an equal footing and independent
from each others boot infrastructure.)

The second problem is that both FreeBSD + FreeSBIE use
the /boot directory for the whole boot infrastructure.
However, I think it should be possible to hack the
sources so that either of the two uses a different
directory name, so there's no collision.  (I have not
tried that yet, but I think it shouldn't be too
difficult.)

The third problem is that both the FreeBSD "fixit" stuff
and FreeSBIE use a complete base system layout on the
CD (or DVD), i.e. /usr, /bin etc.   That might be more
difficult to solve.

In the past I had the same problem when I put DragonFly
BSD and FreeBSD on the same CD, because DragonFly also
uses a life file system.  I solved that problem py patching
/sbin/init of dragonfly, so it does a chroot(2) into a
subdirectory of the CD.  So the whole DragonFly life file
system runs from a subdirectory (called /dragonfly), so
there is no collision with the FreeBSD fixit stuff.
(That patch now is even officially integrated in the
DragonFly source repository.  The chroot directory can
be enabled and selected by the loader script, using a
kenv(2) variable.)

Now I wonder if the same approach would work for FreeSBIE?

Also, are there any other problems that I'm going to face?
In particular, FreeSBIE seems to perform various mounts
itself from its start scripts.  Any chroot subdirectory
would have to be taken into account there, too, which may
be difficult.  I'm currently unsure how to proceed here.

Any hints, ideas and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Best regards
   Oliver

PS:  Sorry for the long mail.  I thought it would be best
to explain the issue in detail.

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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