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I was looking at laptops recently. I took 2 linux CDs, an OpenBSD
install CD,
and a USB stick with OpenBSD on it.
I got a lot more useful information about hardware compatibility from
the OpenBSDs than the Linux CDs because OpenBSD didn't try to bring up
anything graphical at the beginning.
The tools on the OpenBSD install disk were (just barely) sufficient
to do what I needed. I didn't use the stick because the USB ports on the
store systems weren't easily accessible.
I've also rescued unbootable systems with the OpenBSD install disk.
"Live CDs" take forever to boot and run because seeking on a CD is very
slow.
The install CD came up a great deal faster because it didn't try to set up
a fancy environment.
If one really wanted to make an OpenBSD live DVD, one might (this has
*not* been tested):
Install onto a clean disk with everything on one partition.
Add 2 entries to / (/mem_var, /mem_etc)
Add 3 entries to /dev for memory file systems.
Edit /etc/fstab to point /tmp, /var, and /etc to those.
Add some code to the beginning of /etc/rc to:
create the 3 memory file systems
mount /mem_etc and /mem_var
copy /etc to one and /var to another
unmount the copies
Create a DVD with a boot sector from the above.
Presumably one could write a script to do this procedure and apply it to
any release.
I don't intend to write such a script. Someone who wanted to do this would
need to know the purpose of /etc/rc and shell programming.
That person would not need to know any kernel internals.
All the necessary tools have sufficient manual pages.
I'm quite sure I missed something. init should continue to read the buried
/etc/rc... or at least about 40 releases ago that's what would happen.
This begs the questions of networking, setting up X, etc.
This doesn't rate a FAQ entry. It does show "you can do this with the tools
supplied and it's not rocket science".
