Norman Gray <nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> Greetings.
>
> I'm trying to install the released OpenBSD 5.4 onto a old-ish netbook
> without an optical drive. I thought I could do this via
> install54.iso; I can see where I need to get to, and can almost get
> there, but I can't find the last step.
>
> I suspect this needs only a 1- or 2-line answer.
>
> Target machine (not ideal, admittedly):
>
> * Acer Aspire One ZG8 ('no, don't throw it out, I'll try OpenBSD on it!') \
> [1]
> * ...so i386
> * Internal disk
> * No optical drive, but two USB ports and an SD slot
> * Previously had Windows on it *shudder*
> * No dmesg, I'm afraid, since part of my problem is an inability to
> mount any storage.
>
> I can boot the machine with the floppy.fs image (dd'ed to a flash
> drive), and go through the configuration, accepting defaults, and
> whole-disk partitioning the internal disk, to the point where I select
> the full installation media. This I can't do.
>
> Problem 0 is that the boot fails to detect networking hardware. I
> understand that the wireless interface doesn't work on this machine
> with OpenBSD, but that the wired one should work [2]. However the
> wired interface _isn't_ detected, and the installation script goes
> straight from 'System hostname?' to 'DNS domain name?' even though
> it's plugged in to an ethernet network which is offering DHCP
> services. I can't see anything in the dmesg that's relevant (no 'fxp'
> or 'vlan'). I'm reasonably confident the network is behaving as it
> should, but it's _possible_, though unlikely, that the wired interface
> is simply broken (the machine's previous owner only ever used it
> wireless). But there's not much to go on, and I'm uncertain how to
> debug this further.
>
> But it's OK!: I can install it from install54.iso, also dd'ed to a
> flash drive. (the machine's intended for offline use, so 'never
> connected to the internet' would be a somewhat desirable property).
>
> And this is where I'm stuck.
>
> The install54.iso isn't bootable in this context, but all I need to do
> is to boot the machine using floppy.fs, then mount the install54 flash
> drive, and give that as the 'disks' target.
>
> But (plan A) if I select 'disks' as the location of the sets, the
> only device that comes up is the internal hard disk, and this is true
> whether I have the install54 flash drive plugged in to the second USB
> port, alongside the floppy.fs drive on a USB expander, or burned to an
> SD card. Again, nothing obviously relevant in dmesg -- I can see the
> wd0 device being detected, but no obvious 'USB failure'. The USB port/bus
> works, since that's where the bootable floppy.fs is sitting.
>
> OK, Plan B. The second-stage boot is detecting three devices (namely
> internal hard disk, plus the floppy.fs drive and the install54 drive):
> 'hd0', 'hd1', 'hd2'. So I try booting directly from there:
>
> boot> b hd0:/5.4/i386/bsd
>
> (and so on through hd{0,1,2}{,a,c}:, with and without the leading
> slash, ..., -- I'm getting a bit desperate here), but I get 'no such
> file or directory' or 'invalid argument'. Looking at 'm diskinfo'
> tells me that there are three devices there (which is what I expect),
> but not much more.
>
> I'm vague about the details, but I have a reasonably secure schematic
> understanding of the boot process, which doesn't conflict with what I
> read in [3]. I'd be interested to know what I'm missing or
> misunderstanding.
>
> Plan C: create a custom installer (eg [4, 5]). That appears to depend
> on having a working OpenBSD system, to call /usr/mdec/installboot.
> But I don't -- the other OSs I have to hand are OS X and FreeBSD.
>
> Plan d (not worth a capital letter): it looks like I could try copying
> /bsd from /5.4/i386/bsd to the top of that filesystem and... see what
> happens, but (a) I run into filesystem support limitations on OS X,
> and (b) even if I dealt with that, I'd still have to make the modified
> filesystem bootable. bless(8) [6] is the broad analogue of
> installboot on OS X, but I suspect it's specific to both HFS+ and to
> Apple's BIOS, so this seems unlikely to work. Even then, 'flailing
> around blindly' is never a good problem solving strategy.
>
> Plan e: I could try booting the Mac with the floppy.fs, doing an
> OpenBSD install onto another flash drive, making _that_ bootable,
> and... no. On my main work machine, that could go very wrong very
> quickly (!), and I'm not even going to go there unless I'm very
> confident I know what I'm doing.
>
> So there I am. Plans A and B seem tantalisingly close to a solution,
> but missing a final step. Writing out the email hasn't produced an
> 'aha!'; a fair amount of googling suggests I'm not missing anything
> terribly obvious (somewhat surprisingly: this is a slightly odd
> configuration I'm attempting, but not insanely exotic); the
> misc@openbsd.org list doesn't appear to be searchable (right?). So I
> seem to have exhausted the DIY possibilities. Therefore...
>
> Dear list: What is the one line I'm missing?
>
> Thanks for any pointers.
>
> Norman
>
>
>
> [1] http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB102059&cv=820
> [2] http://www.darwinsys.com/openbsd/laptops.html
> [3] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#Boot386
> [4] http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140225072408
> [5] http://blog.breeno.net/2014/02/creating-flexible-openbsd-usb-installer.h\
> tml
> [6] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/M\
> anpages/man8/bless.8.html
>
>
> --
> Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk
> SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
Assuming you are somewhat experienced with OpenBSD, setting up a bootable drive
manually is not that hard
