Installation on OpenBSD area

[Zielonykid123]

Hello. I have created a partition of type A600 using Linux. When installer asked me for the installation type or anything it was, i selected OpenBSD area. Then i can see some letters. Are these letters all of my partitions on the whole disk, or rather partitions that will be inside of the A600 partition? And what with the bootloader? It will be installed to first partition on my drive that is my EFI partition or it will be installed to a partition of the A600 partition or anything else? How would I boot it up after installation?

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by Zielonykid123

Then i can see some letters. Are these letters all of my partitions on the whole disk, or rather partitions that will be inside of the A600 partition?

Let's look at a disklabel(8) report, and figure it out together. Here, for an example, is the layout of the disklabel from my main disk drive on this laptop. Sizes are shown in gigabytes for readability. Let's look at some of these letters:

# disklabel -p g sd2
# /dev/rsd2c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: SR CRYPTO
duid: 84cf7725b144158a
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 29185
total sectors: 468860513 # total bytes: 223.6G
boundstart: 64
boundend: 468860450
drivedata: 0 

16 partitions:
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:             1.0G               64  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12958 # /
  b:             8.1G          2104512    swap                    # none
  c:           223.6G                0  unused                    
  d:             4.0G         19101312  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /tmp
  e:            20.0G         27503264  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /var
  f:             4.0G         69432928  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /usr
  g:             1.0G         77818848  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /usr/X11R6
  h:            15.0G         79907296  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12958 # /usr/local
  i:             8.0G        111362560  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12960 # /usr/src
  j:            19.0G        128150496  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12959 # /usr/ports
  k:           143.5G        167975616  4.2BSD   4096 32768     1 # /home
#

The OpenBSD GPT partition on this drive consumes most of the space. It starts at sector 64 and runs contiguously through to sector 468,860,450. These are the boundstart and boundend noted in the disklabel report.

The root partition is normally assigned to partition "a" of the boot drive. On secondary, non-boot drives, partition "a" is just another OpenBSD disklabel partition.

The swap partition is normally assigned to the "b" partition of the boot drive. If the boot drive has a "b" partition, and it is configured as swap, it will be automatically assigned and used for swapping.


The "c" partition is always the whole physical drive, from the first sector to the last. In this case, from sector 0 through sector 468,860,513.

The remaining disklabel partitions on this drive, "d" through "k", are assigned for various storage areas.

Please note that there is no EFI partition on this drive. That is because this drive sd2 is not a physical drive -- it is a virtual drive used for the plaintext (unencrypted) access to an encrypted hard drive sd0. The disklabel for the "backing store" sd0 is a little different:

# disklabel -p g sd0
# /dev/rsd0c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: SSD2SC240G1CS175
duid: da2a4f0cd8f1aa8c
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 29185
total sectors: 468862128 # total bytes: 223.6G
boundstart: 1024
boundend: 468862065
drivedata: 0 

16 partitions:
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:           223.6G             1024    RAID                    
  c:           223.6G                0  unused                    
  i:             0.0G               64   MSDOS                    
#

Here, there are only 2 user-defined disklabel partitions, "a" and "i". "a" is the area that makes up the encrypted space that is my virtual drive sd2, and "i" is the EFI boot partition. Note the boundstart value here. The space before sector 1024 is consumed by the GPT and the EFI boot partition. The "MSDOS" or FAT filesystem can be mounted, though it's not something I ever bother to do.

[Zielonykid123]

Originally Posted by jggimi

Let's look at a disklabel(8) report, and figure it out together. Here, for an example, is the layout of the disklabel from my main disk drive on this laptop. Sizes are shown in gigabytes for readability. Let's look at some of these letters:

# disklabel -p g sd2
# /dev/rsd2c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: SR CRYPTO
duid: 84cf7725b144158a
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 29185
total sectors: 468860513 # total bytes: 223.6G
boundstart: 64
boundend: 468860450
drivedata: 0 

16 partitions:
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:             1.0G               64  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12958 # /
  b:             8.1G          2104512    swap                    # none
  c:           223.6G                0  unused                    
  d:             4.0G         19101312  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /tmp
  e:            20.0G         27503264  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /var
  f:             4.0G         69432928  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /usr
  g:             1.0G         77818848  4.2BSD   2048 16384     1 # /usr/X11R6
  h:            15.0G         79907296  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12958 # /usr/local
  i:             8.0G        111362560  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12960 # /usr/src
  j:            19.0G        128150496  4.2BSD   2048 16384 12959 # /usr/ports
  k:           143.5G        167975616  4.2BSD   4096 32768     1 # /home
#

The OpenBSD GPT partition on this drive consumes most of the space. It starts at sector 64 and runs contiguously through to sector 468,860,450. These are the boundstart and boundend noted in the disklabel report.

The root partition is normally assigned to partition "a" of the boot drive. On secondary, non-boot drives, partition "a" is just another OpenBSD disklabel partition.

The swap partition is normally assigned to the "b" partition of the boot drive. If the boot drive has a "b" partition, and it is configured as swap, it will be automatically assigned and used for swapping.


The "c" partition is always the whole physical drive, from the first sector to the last. In this case, from sector 0 through sector 468,860,513.

The remaining disklabel partitions on this drive, "d" through "k", are assigned for various storage areas.

Please note that there is no EFI partition on this drive. That is because this drive sd2 is not a physical drive -- it is a virtual drive used for the plaintext (unencrypted) access to an encrypted hard drive sd0. The disklabel for the "backing store" sd0 is a little different:

# disklabel -p g sd0
# /dev/rsd0c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: SSD2SC240G1CS175
duid: da2a4f0cd8f1aa8c
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 29185
total sectors: 468862128 # total bytes: 223.6G
boundstart: 1024
boundend: 468862065
drivedata: 0 

16 partitions:
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:           223.6G             1024    RAID                    
  c:           223.6G                0  unused                    
  i:             0.0G               64   MSDOS                    
#

Here, there are only 2 user-defined disklabel partitions, "a" and "i". "a" is the area that makes up the encrypted space that is my virtual drive sd2, and "i" is the EFI boot partition. Note the boundstart value here. The space before sector 1024 is consumed by the GPT and the EFI boot partition. The "MSDOS" or FAT filesystem can be mounted, though it's not something I ever bother to do.

I don't understand that. I would like to get a quick reply for my questions.
Really, I'm a Linux user, there are just partitions, unlike BSD.

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by Zielonykid123

I don't understand that. I would like to get a quick reply for my questions.
Really, I'm a Linux user, there are just partitions, unlike BSD.

Then perhaps this OS isn't appropriate to include among your multibooting ambitions. To gain experience and knowledge, and eventually figure this out, you could install it onto its own drive or in a virtual machine.

[Zielonykid123]

Originally Posted by jggimi

Then perhaps this OS isn't appropriate to include among your multibooting ambitions. To gain experience and knowledge, and eventually figure this out, you could install it onto its own drive or in a virtual machine.

Right. I need to figure it out by myself. Thanks for the help, mate.

[sacerdos_daemonis]

Originally Posted by Zielonykid123

Really, I'm a Linux user, there are just partitions, unlike BSD.

A good start would be to research the basics, including BSD terminology. Partition has a slightly different meaning (partition versus slice), server and binary blob refer to different things than Linux terminology. Learning the terminology will reduce most of the confusion.