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Old 27th May 2015
daemonbak daemonbak is offline
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Question Clean install of OpenBSD but keeping existing partition table

Hi, borked an install and want to do a clean install of the whole #! and start with a virgin system. However, I would like to keep my partition table set as is. Of course just the partitions themselves, no actual data should remain

What would be the best way to do this? rm -rf /* and pxeboot to install?

Seems a little barbaric way to do it. Is there a way to wipe all the data, install via pxe and have it use the partitions that are already in place, just adding mount points to their entries?

Thanks
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Old 27th May 2015
bsd-keith bsd-keith is offline
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If you do an update I think it will just overwrite the / partition files.

(I had 5.6 installed & updated it to 5.7 & that seems to have been what happened.)

However, I have found that it is easy to just do a fresh installation after having tried a couple of different ways of installing when I started using it a couple of months ago.
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Old 27th May 2015
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jggimi jggimi is offline
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You can do a clean install, leaving the disklabel and (for MBR architectures) any MBR partition tables intact. 1) Don't write a new MBR. 2) When prompted for disklabel partitioning, choose custom, rather than automatic. You will be sent to the disklabel(8) editor. Don't delete or add any partitions, use the "n" name command to assign partitions to mount points. The partitions will be formatted, but will not be moved.
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Old 27th May 2015
daemonbak daemonbak is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jggimi View Post
You can do a clean install, leaving the disklabel and (for MBR architectures) any MBR partition tables intact. 1) Don't write a new MBR. 2) When prompted for disklabel partitioning, choose custom, rather than automatic. You will be sent to the disklabel(8) editor. Don't delete or add any partitions, use the "n" name command to assign partitions to mount points. The partitions will be formatted, but will not be moved.
so just do a normal pxeboot install and just select custom on the partition manager and add the mountpoints via n flag. then it will wipe all data in all partitions and get me a shiny brand new not borked install?
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Old 27th May 2015
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by daemonbak View Post
so just do a normal pxeboot install and just select custom on the partition manager and add the mountpoints via n flag.
Correct, for the most part. The install script will maintain the old partitions, but the mount points will be lost. Using disklabel(8)'s n command allows you to (re)name these partitions.
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...then it will wipe all data in all partitions and get me a shiny brand new not borked install?
Correct. As soon as the disklabel(8) editor is exited, the install script will (re)initialize all partitions using newfs(8).

Last edited by ocicat; 27th May 2015 at 09:58 PM. Reason: correct verb tense...
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Old 27th May 2015
daemonbak daemonbak is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocicat View Post
Correct, for the most part. The install script will maintain the old partitions, but the mount points will be lost. Using disklabel(8)'s n command allows you to (re)name these partitions.

Correct. As soon as the disklabel(8) editor is exited, the install script will (re)initialized all partitions using newfs(8).
Thank you!
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Old 27th May 2015
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jggimi jggimi is offline
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You don't even need to do a PXE boot, or use any installation media, if there is a working ramdisk kernel available (/bsd.rd). If it exists, you can boot it and run the install script.
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Old 27th May 2015
daemonbak daemonbak is offline
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just type /bsd.rd when i get the boot> menu?
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Old 27th May 2015
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Yep. You don't even need the "/", so you can use "bsd.rd" instead. The default location for kernel hunting is the root directory of the "a" partition of the boot drive.
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