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Old 16th June 2010
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lexus45 View Post
As I understood from the FAQ (openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#noflopcd), we have to do the installation for 2 times.
You are making the process more complicated than it actually is, so let's start over.
  • If I were to install OpenBSD onto the hard drive of a desktop system, I would boot the install media, & answer a number of questions about:
    • terminal type.
    • system name.
    • network connections.
    • system password.
    • ntp.
    • X.
    • default console.
    • intended timezone.
    • target disk.
  • Once the disk is identified, fdisk(8) is executed followed by disklabel(8).
Installing to USB is no different. Instead of specifying the hard drive installed on the system, specify the device node of the USB drive. This means that the USB drive has to be plugged in before booting the install media.

Yes, Section 14.17.3 states that the USB drive has to be "mounted":
Quote:
Creating such a "live OpenBSD drive" is simple.
  • Mount your USB drive to the machine you are installing from.
  • Boot your favorite OpenBSD install media.
  • Install as normal, being careful to select your flash drive as the install target.
  • Boot from your newly created USB device.
When the install script prompts you with the following question (Section 4.5.3):
Quote:
Available disks are: wd0, sd0.
Which one is the root disk? (or 'done') [wd0]
Specify the device node of the USB drive, & continue installation. Given the information above, "wd0" is an IDE drive & "sd0" is most likely the USB drive. USB drives are mounted using the SCSI subsystem, so all USB devices will be mounted as "sdX" where "X" is some numerical value. If you have other SCSI or SATA drives in the system, the device node of the USB drive may not be "sd0". It may be "sd1" or "sd2", etc.. You will simply have to shell out of the install script & look at the dmesg(8) output to determine which device is which.

Once the installation has concluded, reboot. You will need to go into the BIOS setting & ensure that booting continues from the USB drive if you want to boot next into OpenBSD residing on the USB drive. This is possible with most newer motherboards. This may not be an option with older motherboards. You will simply have to look at what settings your BIOS provides in order to figure out whether you can boot from USB devices.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of hype about "live" media especially USB devices. USB drives are simply storage which are attached to the system through a different path than IDE, SATA, or SCSI. Section 14.17.3 simply indicates that the install script is flexible enough to target disks other than whatever is installed as the system's primary storage.

This is all that is required to install OpenBSD onto a USB drive.
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