freebsd stable - May 2013 - Generating ISO With Pre-Installed Packages

Hey All,

I'm looking to generate a FreeBSD 9-stable (and maybe 10-current) ISO that
has certain packages pre-installed. I'd like to create my own installation
media that will have certain things installed, like a web management UI
that I'm actively working on. It'd be like what pfSense does.

I did do a little googling and found pfSense's build documentation for
spinning a custom build of pfSense. I'll be spending the weekend looking
over their work. But in the meantime, does anyone know of the steps
involved in such a process? Is the process documented somewhere?

Thanks,

Shawn

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Shawn Webb <lattera at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I'm looking to generate a FreeBSD 9-stable (and maybe 10-current) ISO
that
> has certain packages pre-installed. I'd like to create my own
installation
> media that will have certain things installed, like a web management UI
> that I'm actively working on. It'd be like what pfSense does.
>
> I did do a little googling and found pfSense's build documentation for
> spinning a custom build of pfSense. I'll be spending the weekend
looking
> over their work. But in the meantime, does anyone know of the steps
> involved in such a process? Is the process documented somewhere?

You're looking for package-split.py, a python script that generates
packages.  The blog post below may be of some use. It explains modifying
the script and generating a release.

http://blog.hostileadmin.com/2012/10/08/building-freebsd-media-with-custom-packages/

-- 
Take care
Rick Miller

As Rick pointed out, the package split script will get the packages on the
media. You also need to modify the install process to actually install the
default packages. You might want to look at the bsdinstall setup and add a
script there to load the packages. Another approach is to create a script that
runs on first boot that can install the packages via network or possibly off the
media. For MidnightBSD, I created a firstboot script that prompts the user to
install a graphical desktop environment and the fetched meta packages from our
ports tree that would pull down everything required for kde or GNUstep + window
maker. It was easier as we had sysinstall still.

Lucas Holt

On May 10, 2013, at 9:55 AM, Shawn Webb <lattera at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey All,
> 
> I'm looking to generate a FreeBSD 9-stable (and maybe 10-current) ISO
that
> has certain packages pre-installed. I'd like to create my own
installation
> media that will have certain things installed, like a web management UI
> that I'm actively working on. It'd be like what pfSense does.
> 
> I did do a little googling and found pfSense's build documentation for
> spinning a custom build of pfSense. I'll be spending the weekend
looking
> over their work. But in the meantime, does anyone know of the steps
> involved in such a process? Is the process documented somewhere?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Shawn
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