MirOS BSD #10-current

Setup/Rescue CD for MirOS (i386 and sparc)
==========================================

This ISO 9660 filesystem image (usually a CD-R) provides you with a kernel
(a standard MirOS GENERIC kernel on the i386 platform, a special stripped-
down kernel on the sparc platform) containing a small ramdisk image, which
you can use to install (or upgrade, if available, but that is entirely un-
supported and only contained as a convenience option) a MirOS installation
or do some basic repair (rescue), pre-setup, post-deinstall (such as a cat
/dev/prandom >/dev/rwd0c), hardware detection, or similar tasks. Some use-
ful tools, for example an ssh client and server facilitating remotely con-
trolled action, are also included if space permits (i.e. on i386).

If you are having issues with "special characters" in our documents, try a
utf-8 capable display programme.

If you are reading this text from the Live/Install CD instead of the 5 MiB
Mini-ISO, you will be presented a textual menu interface with four entries
during boot asking you (to be selected via their number or by cursor keys)
whether you want to proceed to the traditional bootloader, run the Live CD
or directly start the Setup programme. Note: formal release ISOs are never
Live CDs because of their multi-architecture capabilities.

The 'cdsshd*.iso' images automatically (try to) configure IPv4 (with DHCP)
and IPv6 (by sending Router Solicitations) on all interfaces, set the root
password, and generate a key and run sshd (look for 'rootpw' in the ISO to
change the password). They are new in 2010.

For further information on how to set up MirOS, visit the website and read
the installation instructions at the following URIs:
	http://www.mirbsd.org/man7/install.i386
	http://www.mirbsd.org/man7/install.sparc
You are also invited to go to the OpenBSD website: http://www.openbsd.org/
and review their installation instructions for the i386 and sparc plaforms
as additional hints, but keep in mind a MirOS installation is slightly yet
not too much differently.


Hardware notes
==============

If you encounter boot problems...
... try 'boot -c' and 'disable pcibios'
... disable "IDE Prefetch" in the BIOS
... disable apm in UKC ('boot -c')
... disable ehci, ohci and uhci (USB) in UKC
... use 'change pcibios' and set flags to something else (e.g. 0x40)
... try to play around until it works, in general ;-)

Problems with the live CD...
... try using the "2nd CD drive or hard disc" option and, when
    asked, enter "cd1a" or similar as root device name
... escape to a shell and change "vesa" in /etc/X11/XF86Config


About MirOS BSD
===============

What is MirBSD?
---------------

MirBSD(tm) is not a stand-alone project or product, but rather it is defi-
ned as the content of the founder's (Thorsten "mirabilos" Glaser) /usr/src
and /usr/ports directories. Thusly, this name is only colloquially used if
referring to a combination of MirOS BSD and the MirPorts Framework.

What am I instaling then?
-------------------------

This is MirOS BSD, a community-developed project (some call it a successor
of MirBSD), developedby a few individuals around the world (mostly Europe,
but also Canada and the rest of America, although these developers are in-
active at the moment). MirOS is compliant to the Open Source Definition.

If this is a boot image from a MirOS development snapshot just boot the CD
(or the bsd.rd ramdisk kernel, even from the OpenBSD bootloader) and start
hacking. Please be sure to report problems and consider sending in unified
diffs for stuff you fixed. A live CD may also be available.

If this is a formal release, there will be no live CD available, but there
will be some more material on the CD, such as complete source code. Possi-
bly, there will be another installation instruction document.

More on the CDs
---------------

The CDs also contain checksums of the installation sets (*ngs) and kernels
(bsd*) which you can check from within the installation. The checksum file
is usually (always true for a release) available as RMD160.gz which is not
only deflate compressed but also contains a gzsig(1) compatible cryptogra-
phic signature you can also check. The gzsig public key is contained with-
in the installer and readily available on our website: http://mirbsd.de/

On the i386 platform, the MirOS Live CDs and Mini-ISOs can also be written
directly to the hard disc (e.g. with cat cdrom9.iso >/dev/hda on GNU/Linux
operating systems, or /dev/rwd0c on BSD) and ran from there. Note this de-
stroys your partition table and any other installed operating systems. The
Live CDs may or may not work when booted from hard disc, apparently due to
their size.

Live CD
-------

The MirOS Live CDs are actually combined Live/Install CDs. This technology
is rather new, especially on the sparc architecture, so there may be bugs.
Note: formal releases do *not* contain the Live CD functionality, only de-
velopment snapshots.

The Live CDs boot into a text-oriented environment which feels almost like
a fresh installation of MirOS with some services enabled. X11 (via xdm, by
using vesa on i386 and wsfb on sparc) can be enabled during boot. The only
way to log in is the pre-defined 'live' user whose password is set at boot
(default is 'live'), and which has sudo(8) rights.

The Live CDs contain no additional software installed via MirPorts, but an
editor (jupp/joe/jstar/jmacs/jpico) and a simple IRC client (tinyirc) have
been added (both are covered by the GPL though; source code is in the CVS,
in the contrib module).

DuaLive and Triforce CD
-----------------------

The MirOS Live CDs have been DuaLive(tm) CDs for a while, which means that
they do not only combine the Install (Setup, Rescue) and baseLive function
for one specific architecture (normally i386, there has been no demand for
a sparc based one, and the sparc bootloader has limitations), but also the
Install (Setup, Rescue) functionality for the other architecture (sparc).

New in 2009 is the Triforce(tm) CD, which is a DuaLive(tm) CD with another
software added: MirGRML (a special grml-small edition), that is booted via
the GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, chained from the MirOS bootloader.


Triforce CD legal notice for grml
---------------------------------

The Triforce(tm) DuaLive(tm)-CD contains additional software, which is not
part of MirOS. Most specifically, this is the GNU GRUB and grml-small. The
copyright of these lies with their respective owners. Source code for them
is either aggregated on the same ISO 9660 image, if there is enough space,
such as on a DVD, or available from the grml project servers, and mirrored
on the MirOS Project servers, for a reasonable period of time (three years
usually).

MirBSD Licence
--------------

MirBSD is
Copyright (c) 2002, 2003
	Thorsten "mirabilos" Glaser <tg@mirbsd.org>
MirOS is
Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,
	      2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
	The MirOS Project Team (see /usr/share/doc/legal/LICENCE)
MirGRML extensions past grml-small are
Copyright (c) 2009
	Thorsten "mirabilos" Glaser <tg@freewrt.org>

Provided that these terms and disclaimer and all copyright notices
are retained or reproduced in an accompanying document, permission
is granted to deal in this work without restriction, including un-
limited rights to use, publicly perform, distribute, sell, modify,
merge, give away, or sublicence.

This work is provided "AS IS" and WITHOUT WARRANTY of any kind, to
the utmost extent permitted by applicable law, neither express nor
implied; without malicious intent or gross negligence. In no event
may a licensor, author or contributor be held liable for indirect,
direct, other damage, loss, or other issues arising in any way out
of dealing in the work, even if advised of the possibility of such
damage or existence of a defect, except proven that it results out
of said person's immediate fault when using the work as intended.


To the maximum extent of my knowledge, MirBSD is free for non-com-
mercial and commercial use as well as non-commercial redistributi-
on; redistribution of several parts of the system require additio-
nal arrangements, such as supplying the source code with redistri-
butions.  Some parts of the system are covered by different licen-
ces, such as the GNU GPL, LGPL, the ASF and Sendmail license.  You
are responsible by yourself to read and comply with these terms if
you intend redistribution. To the maximum extent of our knowledge,
MirOS is free from code that is intended to do damage or infringes
third parties' rights, although due to the implied error-proneness
and complexity of software, as well as the sheer size of the MirOS
operating environment and MirPorts framework, code can be mis-used
so usage of MirOS/MirPorts is at your own risk.


MirOS supplements
------------------

Read the LICENCE file mentioned above, as well as the other files in
that directory, to find out about other strings attached with MirOS.
The 5 MiB Mini-ISO does not contain documentation (or less free work
such as GNU code), but the information can be retrieved via the web-
site as well.

Some of the supplied software is covered by GNU licences. The source
code is available at http://www.mirbsd.org/ and its mirrors; further
information can be found at /usr/share/doc/legal/ as well.

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$MirOS: src/distrib/common/00-README,v 1.20 2014/01/04 20:24:57 tg Exp $