Home Page of PicoBSD 2.2.5

The FreeBSD Daemon

Contents:

What is it?

If you ever dreamed about having really small, tiny, minimal system that would offer you benefits of Unix, while still fitting in reasonable space - here it is!

This version of PicoBSD is a one floppy version of FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE, which in its different variations allows you to have secure dialup access, small diskless router or even a dial-in server. And all this on only one standard 1.44MB floppy - no need to sacrifice over 100MB of your precious HDD space.

PicoBSD is... well, pico-sized :-) , and the minimal hardware that is required to run it is 386SX CPU with 8MB of RAM (no HDD!). Here's more list of features:

  1. Dialup flavour:
  2. Router-like Net flavour:
  3. Dial In Server ISP flavour:
 

Current version of PicoBSD is 0.31, and this means that it is greatly immature, while on the other hand being somewhat tested and improved over previous versions. Work on it still continues by Andrzej Bialecki for the original PicoBSD based on FreeBSD 3.0-current and by me on the version based on FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE.

History

PicoBSD was initially conceived and developed by Andrzej Bialecki who created the scripts as well as built it on FreeBSD 3.0-current. Since I did not have 3.0-current with me and I wanted the reliability 2.2.5-RELEASE offered, I downloaded Andrzej's scripts and modified them as well as the diffs in net/crunch1 and isp/crunch1 so it built cleanly on 2.2.5-RELEASE. I've also added and removed some entries under /dev to be consistent with FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE.

Additionally, it seems that 2.2.5-RELEASE is less of a space hog than 3.0-current, and thus I was able to include natd into the net and isp versions. This also allowed me to include lynx 2.7.2 in the dial version though I had to modify the lynx source pool in order to strip away some rarely used features including multiple charset support and languages. Currently, I'm adding in a stripped down sendmail into the dial version so lynx users may email web pages out.

Andrzej continues to improve PicoBSD further using the 3.0-current source tree and the official PicoBSD web page with the images and build scripts for the version based on FreeBSD 3.0-current are at http://www.freebsd.org/~abial/. As and when possible (highly likely !) I will mirror his additions to the version I'm keeping for FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE.

Work in progress

Since PicoBSD based on FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE is an ongoing project for me, I'll be continuing development on it to meet a few needed objectives. Chief among this is adding in a POP mail client and a text mode browser (while awaiting Andrzej's work on an X server) to the dialup client version. This will be the beginnings of a cheap Network Computer which can be used on older machines. Additionally, I'd like to reduce the memory requirements of PicoBSD to allow it to run with a smaller memory footprint. This might involve removing some programs and leaving only the essentials. Let me know what you'd like to see in PicoBSD based on FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE and i'll work towards getting this included if there is a demand for it.

Where can I get it?

Current version of PicoBSD for FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE is 0.31 with bugfixes

You can download them from this server:

Gzipped version

PKZIPed version Additionally, you may go to the PicoBSD project homepage and download the original version created for FreeBSD 3.0-current by Andrzej.

The scripts and tools which are used to build PicoBSD are available too. These differ from Andrzej's scripts in that they'll build cleanly on FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE. Note that only this release is confirmed to work with this set of scripts. I'm currently tweaking them for 2.2.6-RELEASE.

How can I use it?

The files are packed with PKZIP(tm) compatible program (I chose this type of compression because it's available on almost every kind of system). If you don't have a copy of zip utility, there are many free or shareware versions floating around.

Additionally, I've included gzipped versions which are more readily uncompressed on Unix systems.

Unpack the archive. It contains the README, which shortly describes the system, and a file named 'picobsd.flp'. I assume you will use 1.44MB floppy to boot the system - other sizes (bigger) are not tested.

The file 'picobsd.flp' must be written onto a blank floppy. It does NOT mean that it can be copied using e.g. DOS 'copy' command. You must use a program like rawrite.exe or fdimage.exe to write this file directly on the raw floppy.

Under DOS you would do something like this: 

        C:\> fdimage.exe picobsd.flp a:
while under Unix you would use something like: 
        dd if=picobsd.flp of=/dev/rfd0
Then boot off this floppy and enjoy!

If you feel lost, try the 'help' command. Since there obviously isnt any space on the floppy for man pages, the help command provides a short summary. If you'd need more detail, you could try the online FreeBSD Handbook for more information.

Additionally, if you're lost, you may want to read the following semi-completed PicoBSD FAQ.

About me

Dinesh Nair is professionally unemployed, but prefers to call himself a professional bum. His goal is to get someone to pay him to work on research which he likes. Unfortunately, pigs have a better chance of flying before this happens. However, being a firm believer in the Infinite Improbability Drive, he has not given up hope. PicoBSD is a labour of love for him in an effort to demonstrate that it is unnecessary to spend millions of agungs to get the internet to schools.

Credits

The following people are either responsible for the very existence of this project or assisted me by giving advice and assistance.
Last modified:  Thu May  7 15:10:58 MYT 1998
Any comments? Send them to me
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