A few sips of coffee later I realize that rsd0 is likely your hard disk, change the dd to USB drive example to reference rsd1 instead, making foot shooting incrementally less likely. Updated diff attached.
- Peter -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/ "Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic" delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds. --- faq4.html.ori Sat Sep 28 10:18:59 2013 +++ faq4.html Sat Sep 28 12:09:23 2013 @@ -42,6 +42,7 @@ <li><a href="#MkCD-ROM" >4.3.1 - Creating a boot CD</a> <li><a href="#UnixFlop" >4.3.2 - Creating floppies on Unix</a> <li><a href="#DosFlop" >4.3.3 - Creating floppies on Windows</a> + <li><a href="#MkUSB" >4.3.4 - Creating a boot USB drive</a> </ul> <li><a href="#Boot" >4.4 - Booting OpenBSD install media</a> <li><a href="#Install" >4.5 - Performing a simple install</a> @@ -457,7 +458,38 @@ 1474560 bytes written </pre></td></tr></table> +<a name="MkUSB"></a> +<h3>4.3.2 - Creating bootable USB media on Unix</h3> + <p> +Precise details and device names may vary from Unix variant to Unix +variant; use what is appropriate for your system. + +<p> +If your target machine is able to boot from USB media, the most convenient way to install is to copy the <tt>cd53.iso</tt> or <tt>install53.iso</tt> files to the USB media using +<a href="http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=dd&sektion=0">dd(1)</a> (overwriting any pre-existing file system on there in the process). +An example usage of <tt>dd(1)</tt> is below: + +<p> +<table border=0 width="90%"><tr><td nowrap bgcolor="#EEEEEE"><pre> + # <b>dd if=install53.iso of=/dev/rsd1c bs=32k</b> +</pre></td></tr></table> + +<p> +Once the image is written, check to make sure that the copied image is +the same as the original with the +<a href="http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=cmp&sektion=1">cmp(1)</a> +command. +If the USB media is identical to the image, you will just see another prompt. + +<p> +<table border=0 width="90%"><tr><td nowrap bgcolor="#EEEEEE"><pre> + # <b>cmp /dev/rsd1c install53.fs</b> +</pre></td></tr></table> + + + +<p> <a name="Boot"></a> <h2>4.4 - Booting OpenBSD install media</h2> @@ -467,12 +499,12 @@ to most people. Your system will have to be instructed to boot from whatever media you have chosen to use, usually through a BIOS setup option. -If you want to boot from CD, your system BIOS must be able to and be set to -boot from CD. +If you want to boot from CD or USB media, your system BIOS must be able to and be set to +boot from your chosen install media. Some older systems do not have this option, and you must use a floppy for booting your installation image. Don't worry though; even if you boot from floppy you can still install -from the CD if it is supported by OpenBSD (i.e., almost all IDE drives). +from the CD or USB drive if it is supported by OpenBSD (i.e., almost all IDE drives). <p> You can also install by booting <a href="#bsd.rd">bsd.rd</a> from an