# Building custom memstick image with space for adding a large file?



## Terry_Kennedy (Oct 3, 2019)

I have some new Dell Precision workstations which have the unpleasant feature of not supporting legacy BIOS and refusing to admit that a CD/DVD is bootable unless it is in MBR format. So I have to boot from a memstick to do any special recovery operations. I would like to create a custom memstick image with 1) My latest kernel + world and 2) space for an 18GB compressed backup of the system disk. However, other than a few hints in release(7), this all seems to be an undocumented "Do not open - no user servicable parts inside" type thing. Obviously, Release Engineering knows how to build these images. Does anyone have any experience (or helpful suggestions) for me? The one time I tried `# make release` some years ago, it overwrote my installed configuration files on my running system with the default versions, so I'm a little nervous.


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## SirDice (Oct 3, 2019)

Terry_Kennedy said:


> this all seems to be an undocumented "Do not open - no user servicable parts inside" type thing. Obviously, Release Engineering knows how to build these images. Does anyone have any experience (or helpful suggestions) for me?


You can find a lot of information on how things are done by reading the /usr/src/release/release.sh script. That's were I got most of my release building information from.


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## Phishfry (Oct 3, 2019)

Terry,
I wanted to build my own VM images and I worked through the process in this post.








						Solved - Building with release.sh on -STABLE
					

I have a question. What do I end up with if I build with /usr/src/release/release.sh on a -FreeBSD 12 -STABLE box? Does it built a 12 -STABLE image or 12 -RELEASE?




					forums.freebsd.org
				



To summarize I copied /usr/src/release to a new directory /usr/src/custom and started modifying that.


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