Adding the *BSDs as options

[win8linux]

Is is possible to add the BSDs as options in PINN? The ones that are available are FreeBSD (RPi3), RaspBSD, and NetBSD.

For users of the Raspberry Pi 3, these might help in filling up the directly interactive (disqualifying Win10 IoT) non-Linux OS spot in NOOBS/PINN vacated by the absence of RISC OS as an option.

[procount]

I previously looked at the netBSD image. Fdisk (util-linux 2.20.1 on Ubunutu 14.04) only shows the one FAT partition. The rootfs partition is not identified, so I don't know how to process it.

[win8linux]

The rootfs is probably using UFS. Support for UFS is dependent on the kernel's config when it was compiled. You can try running:
sudo modprobe ufs
and trying again.

I'd suggest mounting the image itself with something like this (refer to manpages for more details):
sudo mount -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=ufs2 /dev/sdb2 /mnt/
and seeing what happens.

If that doesn't work, have a look at this and see if it works; it's a bit outdated, but the process should be similar. UFS support is mainly read-only, but the above link describes how to compile a kernel with read-write mounting capability.

For checking if your kernel has a UFS kernel module:
ls -l /lib/modules/4.4.0-21-generic/kernel/fs/'

For example, here's mine:
> $ ls -l /lib/modules/4.4.0-21-generic/kernel/fs/
total 244
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 9p
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 adfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 affs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 afs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 aufs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 autofs4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 befs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 bfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27390 Apr 19 2016 binfmt_misc.ko
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 btrfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 cachefiles
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 ceph
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 cifs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 coda
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 configfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 cramfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 dlm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 efs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 exofs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 f2fs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 fat
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 freevxfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 fscache
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 fuse
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 gfs2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 hfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 hfsplus
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 hpfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 isofs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 jffs2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 jfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 lockd
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 minix
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 ncpfs
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 nfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 nfs_common
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 nfsd
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 nilfs2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 nls
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 ntfs
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 ocfs2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 omfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 overlayfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 pstore
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 qnx4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 qnx6
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 quota
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 reiserfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 romfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 squashfs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 sysv
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 ubifs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 udf
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 ufs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 5 2016 xfs

[procount]

That would also mean compiling UFS into the PINN kernel as well, and understanding how to adjust the partitions in UFS/xxxBSD through partition_setup.sh. I'm not saying no, but I'm afraid it will be low priority as I have plenty of other things to do beforehand. Unless you want to provide any of these as a NOOBS image and a PR to add UFS into PINN.....

[win8linux]

Does it have to be read-write? If not, then the PINN kernel could already be used as is since read-only UFS support is default since the 2.6.x versions (possibly further back).

[procount]

In a Linux rootfs, NOOBS/PINN needs to alter fstab to load the boot partition on the correct device. I have no knowledge of *bsd systems and what is required.

RISC OS uses a BLOB file containing its filesystem and RISC needs to be located at a particular offset/place on the device, which side-steps the issue. But this BLOB causes problems with Ubuntu 16 onwards as that filesystem has been enabled again and gets detected before the FAT partition table, whether RISC OS is installed or not, which is why I still use Ubuntu 14.

[win8linux]

If that's what is used with RISC OS, then is it possible to make BLOB files for *BSD systems? I'm not quite sure, but I don't think that the BSDs would necessarily require specific offsets/places on the device. It is an option, though; I'd suggest placing them near the end as the last partitions to be made.

BTW I'm using Linux Mint 18 KDE (based on Ubuntu 16.04), which would explain the prescence of the ADFS kernel module in my system.