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Old 13th April 2018
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jggimi jggimi is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
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Step 1: test the amd64 install media you already have on all 3 workstations. The bootloader should boot (you see a boot> prompt) on all 3 systems, though the 32-bit-only machine will not be able to boot the kernel. If there is a failure to reach the boot> prompt on any of the systems, then this procedure is unlikely to work.

Step 2: Obtain and save the EFI bootloader files from the amd64 installation media image you already have, as they are not included with the i386 system you will be installing.

Step 3: Become familiar and comfortable with the OpenBSD installation process, as these instructions will not detail those steps. My recommendation is to use i386 installation media, and practice. To ensure you do not inadvertently scribble on an existing workstation disk drive, always use the question mark "?" response to the question, "Which disk is the root disk?" as that is the drive you will install onto and overwrite. The install script will happily destroy the data on any drive you select.

Step 4: when ready, reboot the installation media, but select the shell rather than the install script.

Step 5: insert (or remove and reinsert) the USB drive you will be installing the system onto. Note this sd(4) device number in the kernel messages which appear on insertion. As this is dynamic, it might not be the same as the sd(4) drive number you used during step 3.

Step 6: # cd /dev && sh MAKEDEV sdn where n = the sd(4) drive number obtained in Step 5. This is necessary because the installation media has limited capacity and does not come with a full set of device special files already defined.

Step 7: # fdisk -b 960 -i -y sdn will create an MBR, reserving a small EFI boot partition, creating an OpenBSD MBR partition on the rest of the drive, flagging it as active/bootable.

Step 8: # install will run the install script. When you select this disk as the root disk, the install script will display the MBR layout and ask you if you wish to use the whole disk, the OpenBSD area, or edit the MBR. Answer with the "o" prompt to use the OpenBSD area.

Step 9: After installation has completed, your rebooted and running OpenBSD system should have an "i" disklabel partition, which is the as-yet unformatted EFI partition you created in Step 7. The drive number may have changed after installation, so the value of n may now be different than in earlier steps. Determine what the drive number is with mount(8) or df(1), and use # disklabel sdn to confirm the partition is defined. Then, use # newfs_msdos sdni to format the EFI partition as a FAT filesystem.

Step 10: mount the newly formatted filesystem with # mount /dev/sdni /mnt and then create the boot directory structure with # mkdir -p /mnt/efi/boot

Step 11: copy the 32-bit and 64-bit bootloader files you saved earlier into /mnt/efi/boot.

Step 12: shutdown(8) this system, and take the USB drive to all your workstations. At each successful boot, have another beer.

Last edited by jggimi; 13th April 2018 at 12:02 PM. Reason: step 9 is conducted from the booted, installed system
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