Thread: OpenBSD installing OpenBSD from USB
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Old 5th April 2010
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shep View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that you need to copy
Code:
cp /usr/mdec/boot /mnt
from a working OBSD machine. This could be an obstacle for newbies whose only machine needs a usb device for installation.
To make the drive bootable, the following three files are required:
  • /usr/mdec/boot
  • /usr/mdec/installboot
  • /usr/mdec/biosboot
...& all can be extracted from base46.tgz itself. However, to run installboot requires being on a OpenBSD platform which gets back to your original point. To construct a bootable USB install device requires a working OpenBSD installation.
Quote:
Once you have accomplished the install and have a working internet connection then add the additional file sets per FAQ 4.11
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#AddFileSet
The above would fit on a 128mb drive
Configuring a USB drive for all file sets + kernels takes 200-210MB as I recall, but if your goal is to utilize very small USB drives, you may want to consider copying floppy46.fs to the USB drive with dd(1). This only provides enough functionality to boot & grap file sets via ftp(1).
Quote:
Another thought is whether it would be feasible to make minimal i386 and amd64 *.img files that could be burned directly to the usb flash drive and post them on the internet as a service.
This has been discussed repeatedly on misc@ lately, & you will get little (if any) support from the community in general. ie:

http://marc.info/?t=126765524000004&r=1&w=2

The most salient argument is that it would cut into CD sales.
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