Re: Speed up CD/DVD-based FreeBSD

> We have a special case of running FreeBSD (actually a NanoBSD) from a CD/DVD.
> The reason behind using a CD/DVD is to prevent manipulations.
> 
> Now, after the GUI hass started, the system autologin a user and autostarts
> Firefox. But starting Firefox takes ~ 5 - 7 minutes, while the operating system
> takes 2 - 3 minutes. As you can imagine, this isn't quite a useful time.
> 
> Is there a simple way, considering enough RAM in the box, to speed up the
> process? Loading Firefox makes the DVD drive moving the head very often - I
> assume this is the fact because I can hear the head scratiching around very
> intense.
> 
> Does FreeBSD bring tools/facilities onboard to achive what I'm requesting or do
> I need an additional port/softwarepackage?

Are you custom building this CD-rom image, or is it just a slightly modified
stock FreeBSD distritbution with some scripts?

One suggestion would be to run from a mfs /usr, including /usr/local,
as a sample on how to do this take a look at /etc/rc.initdiskless
that does this for /etc and /var when booting diskless.

I suspect your slow down is shared library linking time, which 
would mean you might also solve this problem by building a staticly
linked firefox binary.  This would be much simpler to try out.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes_at_freebsd.org