# FreeBSD 13 ISO larger than DVD?



## Snurg (Mar 19, 2021)

The ISO is larger than a normal DVD.
Is it intended that double layer DVDs are to be used now?

Just wondering...


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## bsduck (Mar 19, 2021)

Which ISO are you talking about?
FreeBSD-13.0-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso is 4.5 GB, which fits on a 4.7 GB single-layer DVD.


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## Snurg (Mar 20, 2021)

Yes this ISO.
K3b tells me this image doesn't fit the disk in the burner.
Just wondering.

Maybe a problem with the blank DVD, the drive or whatever.
Will look into that tomorrow, too tired now.


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## bessie (Mar 20, 2021)

FreeBSD-13.0-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso reports a file size of 4783024128 bytes which might be touch and go for some writeable discs. Depending on brand they can vary up to 200MB either side of the nominal 4.7G


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## Derek C Johnstone (May 4, 2021)

Now I'm using FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso
I've tried Signalex DVD-R, Philips DVD-RW, Maxell DVD+R, All not big enough.
Finally onto Verbatim DVD+R DL Dual layer.  But I can only read that in a dual layer drive.


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## chungy (May 4, 2021)

The image is around 300MB larger than a single-layer DVD-R can fit...

Good news if you have network access though: you don't really need the DVD. disc1 (which also requires DVD-R media... it's far too large for a CD-R) has the entire base system on it, and from there you can use pkg(8) to download extra stuff.


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## msplsh (May 4, 2021)

Yeah, this seems like a "did not test" sort of thing.  That's not valid.









						DVD - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## astyle (May 5, 2021)

Most burnable DVD's (DVD-R, DVD+R, and the like) are only 4.4 GB.... Once ISO's started getting that large a few years ago, I just stopped using DVD's and switched to USB sticks. They are easier to deal with, and re-usable. all you need is Rufus (if you're on Windows).


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## msplsh (May 5, 2021)

Thats:
1: Wrong, check the link and
2: Great, for you

For everybody else who cares about optical media, I guess it's going to be using -disc1 or DVD-DL.


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## Tieks (May 5, 2021)

Rufus is a utility to create a bootable USB-stick. It's an alternative to `dd`.


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## chungy (May 5, 2021)

msplsh said:


> Thats:
> 1: Wrong, check the link and


Wikipedia is using the metric gigabyte just as the disc manufacturers do. 4.7GB is 4,700,000,000 bytes which is slightly under 4.4GiB


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## astyle (May 5, 2021)

msplsh said:


> Thats:
> 1: Wrong, check the link and
> 2: Great, for you
> 
> For everybody else who cares about optical medial, I guess it's going to be using -disc1 or DVD-DL.


I burned plenty of DVD's back in the day, the OS's (including FreeBSD) always reported the size as 4.4 GB.  The wikipedia page reports the sizes in decimal nomenclature. On a computer, the reported size would be smaller. I never liked how consumers got confused by marketers (and their insistence on sticking with the decimal nomenclature, while in reality, reported size is smaller) like that.


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## Jose (May 6, 2021)

astyle said:


> I never liked how consumers got confused by marketers (and their insistence on sticking with the decimal nomenclature, while in reality, reported size is smaller) like that.


This is now the national and international standard, and gaining acceptance in the FOSS community. It's also the law


			https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/flashdrives.pdf


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## astyle (May 6, 2021)

Jose said:


> This is now the national and international standard, and gaining acceptance in the FOSS community. It's also the law
> 
> 
> https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/flashdrives.pdf


Reading that PDF about flashdrives, it's not 'the law'.  It merely says that manufacturers like SanDisk do have the right to print 4.7GB on the front of the package, and on the back, to fess up that the OS may report less. It's basically legal to print a 'standards-compliant' number, even if it's ultimately a misleading one. The case was 'Dismissed with prejudice', and I had to do some googling to discover that this means the court said, 'go away, and don't bother us with that again'.

Looking at the international standard link that Jose provided - it's just an article that explains the disparity between the decimal notation that marketers like to use.  And it points out that the bigger the drive, the bigger the disparity. Reading that article, this is what I found: In IEC 80000-13:2008, all branches of the IT industry have a tool with which to iron out this inconsistency. Googling for the standard itself - it's up for review.

And even Ubuntu acknowledges that there's bugs in their policy: Ubuntu Units Policy. 
Kibi, Mebi, Gigi, Yebi.... give me a break! 25-year-old info that doesn't reflect today's reality.


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## msplsh (May 6, 2021)

You can check the -h, -H, and --si options under `man df`, `man du` to see if FreeBSD is explicit in how many bytes a GB and a GiB are.  Seems reasonable to expect the same from comms on their forums.


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## debguy (May 7, 2021)

I've had two hang-ups with install

#1 I like the installer text interface - a graphical one is asking for platform trouble ... ie the following

I installed Linux UEK `to run mathematica` so i though.  RH demanded to be "the King" of bootloaders.  I decided OK, let it, I'll install FreeBSD 13 after!  FreeBSD did NOT make the ?pmbr? and when I booted from BIOS I got redhat bootloader.  ugh!  I later found i can't use redhat it's borne with nouveau to prevent nvidia driver install (and other bad things, so am deleting redhat).  I fear ubuntu will give me the same lines of hastling my card (I already checked: they do obstruct).

1)  The boot loader didn't inform me if I am BIOS or UEFI booted.  I had 0 idea that would "be a problem with other os  _later_".  Didn't warn me it would not be able to boot without pmbr before installing and didn't suggest making one.  Good news is that it didn't refuse to go forward like RHEL did!

2)  It is _difficult_ to boot from USB (no clear way to boot HD install from USB).  Booting from USB has advantages of "staying out of the who is king of the disk image boot list game".  And is necessary if for any reason the amazing pmbr or uefi magic is ... no joy.  For 100 reasons I so like booting from inserted USB.  There is no best bootloader imho because none of them play nice with "all systems all versions", so it's always a hack.


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## debguy (May 7, 2021)

Snurg said:


> The ISO is larger than a normal DVD.
> Is it intended that double layer DVDs are to be used now?
> 
> Just wondering...


With a blue sharpe, if you mark a few of the first sectors (if you can find documentation which those are), the Sony PS4 sometimes recoginzes it as Blue Ray and whala, it all fits.  There's you howto!


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## msplsh (May 7, 2021)

That's, uh, not how the sharpie trick against key2audio works...


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## chungy (May 7, 2021)

It's also not how optical discs work. CD, DVD, and Blu-ray are all different physical formats and you can't convert them into another.


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## astyle (May 7, 2021)

Sony invented 'em all - CD, DVD and blu-ray. The real difference is the size of the track containing the data.


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## eldaemon (May 8, 2021)

Optical has a lot of advantages over flash drives. Namely, longevity. It's funny because disc-1 has been too big for a CD for years.

I feel like this should be better thought out. Disc-1 should fit on a CD, DVD should fit on a DVD...

I like to have a MDisc copy of the FreeBSD releases but won't be able to do that with 13.0.


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## msplsh (May 9, 2021)

Oh good grief, I didn't notice that with disc1.  Are people asleep at the wheel here or something?


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## Phishfry (May 9, 2021)

At the very least it seems like a waste of resources for the build cluster.
Creating ISO disk images that can't be used.


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## andrzej4bsd (May 9, 2021)

This is already reported as a bug:






						253483 – FreeBSD 13 beta 2.amd64.iso is too large for single DVD
					






					bugs.freebsd.org
				








						255057 – The freebsd iso file was not fit to my 4.7Gb dvd-rw disc
					






					bugs.freebsd.org


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## msplsh (May 9, 2021)

If the easy answer is "just use a dual layer disc" then that's probably how they'll close it.  Correcting the grossly overstuffed disc1, however, is not as easy a bug to close (if it's meant for CDs).


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## Phishfry (May 9, 2021)

Won't Fix- use USB stick instead???



msplsh said:


> overstuffed disc1, however, is not as easy a bug to close (if it's meant for CDs).


I agree. It would be easy to shrink the DVD footprint to fit 4.3 gigabytes.
The disc1 size is not likely to shrink to fit a CD. That horse left the stable with version 12.


They need to convert DVD image to memstick then. (DVD version has some packages which could be useful)
mini-memstick
memstick
maxi-memstick???

Ditch the ISO format if it don't fit on optical medium.


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## astyle (May 11, 2021)

Phishfry said:


> Won't Fix- use USB stick instead???
> 
> Ditch the ISO format if it don't fit on optical medium.


No need to ditch the ISO format - you can use it with Rufus on USB sticks just fine, and they boot, too. The ISO format is just that flexible and adaptable, and standards-compliant - even Mac and BeOS users figured out how to handle it.


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## Phishfry (May 11, 2021)

Again with the Rufus? I know there are use cases for an ISO image. I know all about juliet, el torito and ISO9660 .
There is no sense arguing about it. It is a matter of personal opinion. To me ISO is synonymous with optical disk image. Optical disk is dead in my world. Gone like the dodo and floppy.


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## astyle (May 11, 2021)

Phishfry said:


> Again with the Rufus? I know there are use cases for an ISO image. I know all about juliet, el torito and ISO9660 .
> There is no sense arguing about it. It is a matter of personal opinion. To me ISO is synonymous with optical disk image. Optical disk is dead in my world. Gone like the dodo and floppy.


If you don't like Rufus, you're always welcome to use  /bin/dd. File formats are more flexible than you'd think. BTW, ISO is shorthand for ISO9660. There are a few other standards that introduce new features to that image format, but they all recommend maintaining backwards compatibility. Separating hardware from software is frankly the basics in computer world. That's what allowed the ISO format to persist, while floppies and CD's are going away.


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## chungy (May 11, 2021)

Phishfry said:


> To me ISO is synonymous with optical disk image. Optical disk is dead in my world. Gone like the dodo and floppy.


And even if that were the case (and it isn't), the ISO-9660 file system is still an extremely versatile format that can apply equally well to CDs/DVDs/BDs as well as USB sticks. There is no reason to ditch it just because you think one particular medium is irrelevant, the file system works well on other mediums too (like astyle mentions, use dd or cp to put the image on a USB stick)

I do personally think there should be more thought put into the sizes of the FreeBSD images, however. If disc1 can't be shrunk to a CD-R size, I'm honestly not bothered by requiring a DVD-R -- they are just as cheap and I'm pretty sure every computer in this century is capable of at least the DVD format. dvd1's size is a different matter. dual-layer DVD-R media has always been more expensive and it's mainly just a bit larger than a single-layer DVD. I'm almost certain that more thought can be put into making it fit on single-layer DVDs again.


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