Matt Dillon has created ‘live CD’ features, so you can boot from a DragonFly CD and get to a useable prompt. To support this, cpdup is now included in /bin, and mount_mfs now has the -C option, which will automatically copy a read-only filesystem into a MFS mount. An experimental ISO is available on the download page.

Be warned that you will have to lay out filesystems on your own with fdisk, disklabel, etc., and this is largely undocumented, except in the README.

Matt Dillon had some further comments on what he intends this live CD to accomplish, and where it could go:

“The idea with /usr/src/nrelease is to start producing the ‘new’ release
infrastructure that we discussed a month or two ago. My goal is
basically to create an infrastructure that for all intents and purposes
looks like a fully installed system, but is entirely based on the CD (does
not require a hard drive), and then to hook the ‘boot into installer’
option into the boot menu and have it set a variable that triggers
the installer during the RC sequence.

The advantages of this are:

* The CD can be used both to install new DFly systems and as an
emergency recovery CD. It has everything except ports. e.g. it
has all the manual pages.

* People who just want a shell prompt to play with DFly can boot
the CD and play with it without installing it onto their HD.

* The installer can depend on there being a fully functioning system,
which means that the installer (when written :-)) can be run from
the CD or from a previously installed normal HD-booted system.

* We do away with sysinstall.

I would also like to see an augmented boot menu for other situations.
For example, a boot menu option that causes the CD to boot normally but
to automatically run ‘dhclient’ on any existing network interfaces,
and to configure a random root password for remote access,
and another option that causes the CD to boot normally but then access
further boot/configuration info from the network to support automated
installations with minimal (or no) user intervention for people with
larger networks.”