2 <! $FreeBSD: src/release/picobsd/doc/src/intro.html,v 1.7 1999/08/28 01:33:25 peter Exp $ >
3 <! $DragonFly: src/release/picobsd/doc/src/Attic/intro.html,v 1.2 2003/06/17 04:27:20 dillon Exp $ >
9 <CENTER><h1><B>PicoBSD</B></h1>
10 <HR shade align="center" size="8" width="25%"></CENTER>
13 <p><b>Contents:</b></p>
16 <A HREF="#what">What is it</a>, and
17 <A HREF="#hardware">what hardware is supported?</a>
20 <A HREF="#where"><b>Where can I get it?</b></a>
23 <A HREF="#how">How can I use it?</a>
26 <A HREF="#create">Create your own, custom version of PicoBSD!</a>
27 <p>Get the full PicoBSD Development Kit as well as full CVS repository of
31 <A HREF="#info">Where can I get more info?</a>
34 <A HREF="bugs.html">Release history and bugs parade...</a>
36 <A HREF="#future">Plans for the future.</a>
39 <A HREF="#credits">Credits</a>
42 <A HREF="#license">Licensing issues</a>
45 <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</a>
49 <HR shade align="center">
50 <HR shade align="center">
52 <A NAME="what"><h3>What is it?</h3>
53 <p>If you ever dreamed about having really small, tiny, minimal system that
54 would offer you benefits of Unix, while still fitting in reasonable space -
57 <p>PicoBSD is a one floppy version of
58 <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</a> 3.0-current, which in its
59 different variations allows you to have secure dialup access, small diskless
60 router or even a dial-in server. And all this on only one standard 1.44MB
61 floppy - no need to sacrifice over 100MB of your precious HDD space.</p>
63 <p>PicoBSD is... well, pico-sized :-) , and the minimal hardware that
64 is required to run it is 386SX CPU with 8MB of RAM (no HDD!).
68 <p>Here you can find detailed <A HREF="hardware.html">list of supported
69 hardware and features</a>.
71 <p>Current version of PicoBSD is @VER@, and this means that I consider it
72 still immature, while on the other hand being somewhat tested and improved
73 over previous versions. Does it tell you something? Well, at least you can
74 try it - I cannot guarantee that it doesn't burn your house or blow up your
75 machine, though the former is unlikely... :-)</p>
77 <HR shade align="center">
78 <A NAME="where"><h3>Where can I get it?</h3>
80 <p>There are two language editions of PicoBSD - English and Polish one. You'll
81 be probably more interested in the former :-) The only difference is in
82 the set of fonts included, C locale, and the language of messages.</p>
83 <p>You can download them from www.freebsd.org or one of its mirrors:</p>
85 <li>Dialup version: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/pb_en-D.bin">English</a>
86 (<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/doc_dial/README.en">README</a>) or
87 <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/pb_pl-D.bin">Polish</a>
88 (<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/doc_dial/README.pl">README</a>)
90 <li>Networking (formerly known as 'router-like') version: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/pb_en-N.bin">English</a>
91 (<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/doc_net/README.en">README</a>)
92 or <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/pb_pl-N.bin">Polish</a>
93 (<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/doc_net/README.pl">README</a>)
95 <li>Router version: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/pb_en-R.bin">English</a>
96 (<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/doc_router/README.en">README</a>)
97 or <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/pb_pl-R.bin">Polish</a>
98 (<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/doc_router/README.pl">README</a>)
100 <li>Dial-in server version: waiting for
101 <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/beta.html">beta testers</a> ... :-)
104 <p><i>(See the <A HREF="hardware.html">feature list</a> for more
107 <p>The above floppies were built from 3.0-current sources. Though they
108 provide more features, they tend to be less stable than the latest
109 RELEASE of FreeBSD. Dinesh Nair back-ported these scripts to the
110 latest release (2.2.5), and continues development of PicoBSD using sources
111 from that branch. You can find floppies built from 2.2.5 sources
112 <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd225/">here</a> or at
113 <A HREF="http://info.net-gw.com/picoBSD/">his server</a>.</p>
115 <HR shade align="center">
116 <A NAME="how"><h3>How can I use it?</h3>
117 <p>Previous versions were packed with PKZIP(tm) compatible program - now they
118 are simply the raw binary floppy images, so you just need to grab the
119 appropriate version of the file.</p>
121 <p>I assume you will use 1.44MB floppy to boot the system - other sizes
122 (bigger) are not tested.</p>
124 <p>The file 'pb_xx-X.bin' must be written onto a blank floppy. It does NOT
125 mean that it can be copied using e.g. DOS 'copy' command. You must use a
127 <A HREF="ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/tools/rawrite.exe">rawrite.exe</a>
129 <A HREF="ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/tools/fdimage.exe">fdimage.exe</a>
130 to write this file directly on the raw floppy.</p>
132 <p>Under DOS you would do something like this:</p>
134 C:\> fdimage.exe pb_xx-X.bin a:
137 <p>while under Unix you would use something like:</p>
139 dd if=pb_xx-X.bin of=/dev/rfd0
142 <p>Then boot off this floppy and enjoy!</p>
144 <p>If you feel lost, try the 'help' command (it's available only on "dialup"
147 <HR shade align="center">
149 <h3>Create your own, custom version of PicoBSD!</h3>
151 <p>I made available also the set of tools
152 (a.k.a the PicoBSD Development Kit) I used to create the floppies (see also the
153 <A HREF="how2build.html">detailed instructions</a>)</p>
155 <p>You can also access the full CVS repository of PicoBSD - beginning with
156 version 0.4 it's a part of official FreeBSD CVS and lives in
157 <code>src/release/picobsd</code>. I also create the snapshots of this source
158 tree - keep in mind that they are not so up-to-date as the tree
159 in FreeBSD CVS. You can get the snapshot I made on
160 Sun Nov 1 11:48:32 PST 1998
161 <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd/picobsd.tgz">here</a>.</p>
163 <p> Now, if you don't like the setup of PicoBSD, or you miss
164 some program, or (better yet) you want to improve PicoBSD - you can grab the
165 copy of exactly the same tools I used and build your own, customized
168 <p>Think of it: if your're an ISP, you can build the dialup version for
169 your customers, including some scripts to automatically connect them to
170 your site. You can also create a demo disk for your friend (or your boss! :-)).
171 You can also build a firewall/router for your office, etc, etc...
172 possibilities are really endless and limited only by your imagination.</p>
174 <p>You will need at least 10MB of free disk space for building, and of course
175 the full system sources installed. I also assume that the sources are
176 quite -current. There is also a back-ported version of the scripts prepared by
177 <A HREF="mailto:dinesh@alphaque.com">Dinesh Nair</a> which builds ok on
180 <p>Version 0.31 was packed with pax(1) - newer versions are packed again
181 with tar and gzip to avoid confusion... :-)</p>
183 <p>I'm very interested in hearing from you about your experiences - if you
184 come up with a setup you think is interesting, please let me know!</p>
186 <HR shade align="center">
187 <A NAME="info"><h3>Where can I get more info?</h3>
189 <p>Almost all of the programs included on the floppies are exactly the
190 same versions as in normal FreeBSD installation, so that the normal
191 manual pages apply. However, I didn't include the manpages themselves -
192 they would take over 200kB!</p>
194 <p> For the total newbies, which would use (I assume)
195 the 'dialup' version, there is a short README on the floppy which gives
196 step by step instructions on how to get a dialup connection. There is also
197 a script called 'dialup' which attempts to configure PPP to allow for automatic
198 log in to your provider, and for background operation.
199 There is also a small help system ('help' command)</p>
201 <p> There are some system utilities which are unique to PicoBSD, and at this
202 moment they are documented in detail only in source and READMEs :-(.</p>
205 <p>As for the new releases which will (hopefully) be prepared in the future:
206 just keep an eye on this page. I'll also send announcements to FreeBSD mailing
209 <HR shade align="center">
210 <A NAME="future"><h3>Plans for the future</h3>
212 <p>Well, I hope that thanks to your comments I'll be able to continuously
213 improve the setup and contents of PicoBSD. I also have specific dreams (if
214 dreams can be specific..) - here they are, as an incentive to your
215 imagination and coding skills:</p>
218 To write a command line tool patterned after Cisco IOS, which could configure
219 various aspects of router-like version of PicoBSD.
220 <p>Well, currently you can read very preliminary draft of proposed
221 architecture, called the <A HREF="UCI.html">Unified Configuration Interface.</a></p>
224 To put an XWindow-like GUI on the 'dialup' floppy. (Update: you can look at
225 <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/preview/preview2.tgz">preview
226 version</a> and send me your comments. <b>I need some help in porting newer
230 To gain some experience with solid state disks, and prepare standard images
231 for e.g. 4MB versions of SSD, with Cisco 25xx-like contents... I also hope
232 to achieve this goal in the nearest
233 future, thanks to involvement of some PicoBSD enthusiast :-)</p>
234 (Update: I'm experimenting with an M-System's 16MB flash right now, and
235 there is also ongoing development for a driver for their DiskOnChip)
238 To be able to boot from more primitive filesystem than FFS - DOS or Minix
239 would be just fine, as they don't waste so much space for their internals.
242 To have an alternative to current MFS - it wastes a lot of space just
243 because it mimicks the normal FFS on top of memory blocks...
246 To further minimize the memory footprint of router-like setup. I'd like it
247 to be able to run truely effortlessly on 4MB machines... This would
248 probably include rewriting oinit(8) to run multithreaded.
251 And many others... You can find a complete list
252 <A HREF="TODO.html">here</a>.
256 <A NAME="credits"><h3>Credits</h3>
258 <p>The following people are either responsible for the very existence of this
259 project, or significantly eased my pains in gaining necessary knowledge:</p>
262 the whole FreeBSD team for this magnificent OS, and their hard work of
263 continuous development,
266 Dinesh Nair, for co-development and preparing of the version which compiled
270 Joe Greco, for his encouraging example of XKERNEL (some parts of the scripts
271 still bear his fingerprints :-) (you can get it
272 <A HREF="../../../xkernel.tgz">here</a>).
274 <li>Goran Hasse of <A HREF="http://www.raditex.se">Raditex AB, Sweden</a>, for
275 sending me M-Systems' and SanDisk flash disks to experiment with.
278 Mike Smith for various tips and encouragement.
281 freebsd-* mailing lists participants, which helped me with some other
285 and many other people who keep encouraging me to continue this work. Thanks,
290 <A NAME="license"><h3>Licensing issues</h3>
292 <p>PicoBSD is distributed under BSD copyright,
293 which allows you to use it in various ways, including commercial
294 applications. So grab it and enjoy! And if you feel that you want to help
295 with this project, either by donating some time to write code, or by
296 some other donation, just <A HREF="mailto:abial@freebsd.org">contact me</a>.</p>
302 <HR shade align="left" size="2" width="100%">
303 <CENTER><h5>Any comments? Send them to
304 <A HREF="mailto:abial@freebsd.org">the author</A> </h5></CENTER>