1dnl $OpenBSD: xfer,v 1.13 2002/02/07 08:57:28 miod Exp $ 2Installation is supported from several media types, including: 3 4 CD-ROM (NOT supported if booting from floppy) 5 FFS partitions 6 Tape 7 Remote NFS partition (NOT supported if booting from floppy) 8 FTP 9 HTTP 10 11If you have the OpenBSD CD-ROM distribution (and a CD-ROM drive), you 12may be able boot from it. If you can boot from the CD-ROM, 13you are home free and can proceed to the installation steps. If not, 14you will need to do some setup work to prepare a bootable image, either 15a floppy, hard drive, or compatible net boot server. 16 17In addition to the bootable image, you also need to consider how to 18access the binary distribution sets to actually install the system. 19If you have the OpenBSD CD-ROM distribution you can either access the 20CD-ROM directly from the bootable image or remotely mounted on another 21system via NFS. 22 23Although you can access the distribution sets directly from the CD-ROM or 24from one of the FTP mirrors over the internet, you may wish to transfer 25the sets to a local FTP or NFS server, or copy them to a partition on 26the target system's disk. 27 28OpenBSDXferFloppyFromDOS 29 30OpenBSDXferFloppyFromUNIX 31 32Creating a bootable hard disk using SunOS, Solaris or other Un*x-like system: 33 34 If you don't have a floppy drive you can copy the floppy 35 installation image "floppy{:--:}OSrev.fs" or the mini-root "miniroot{:--:}OSrev.fs" 36 onto the hard disk you intend to boot on. Traditionally, the 37 way to do this is to use dd(1) to place the bootable filesystem 38 image in the "swap" partition of the disk (while running in 39 single user mode), and then booting from that partition. 40 41 Using the "b" partition allows you to boot without overwriting 42 any useful parts of the disk, you can also use another partition, 43 but don't used the "a" or "c" partition without understanding 44 the disklabel issues described below under "incompatible systems". 45 46 This requires that you be running SunOS, Solaris, OpenBSD or NetBSD 47 which have a compatible view of SunOS disk labels and partitions. 48 49 Use the dd(1) utility to copy the file to the hard drive. 50 The command would likely be, under SunOS: 51 dd if=floppy{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/rsd0b bs=36b 52 - or - 53 dd if=miniroot{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/rsd0b bs=36b 54 and under Solaris: 55 dd if=floppy{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/c0t0d0s1 bs=36b 56 - or - 57 dd if=miniroot{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/c0t0d0s1 bs=36b 58 59 The blocksize is arbitrary as long as it's a multiple of 512-bytes 60 and within the maximum supported by the driver, i.e. bs=126b may 61 not work for all cases. Again, device/partition names may vary, 62 depending on the OS involved. 63 64 If you are preparing the hard drive on an incompatible system or 65 don't care about the hard disk contents, you can also install the 66 bootable image starting at the beginning of the disk. This lets 67 you prepare a bootable hard-drive even if don't have a working 68 operating system on your machine, but it important to understand 69 that the bootable image installed this way includes a "disk label" 70 which can wipe out any pre-existing disklabels or partitioning for 71 the drive. 72 73 If you're starting with a virgin disk and trying to do this under 74 SunOS, use format(8) and newfs(8) to set up the partitions and 75 mark the intended partition as an normal partition type. If you're 76 using OpenBSD, perhaps on another architecture, OpenBSD will 77 create a "fictitious label" that will let you access the whole 78 disk. 79 80 The floppy image is used only for booting, and can be placed in 81 a partition that will be overwritten during the install process, 82 since it actually runs off a ram-disk image in the kernel. In 83 contrast the miniroot is a normal unix root filesystem and you 84 must place in a partition that will not be overwritten until you've 85 completed the installation process. 86 87 To copy the floppy image to the hard disk, preserving SunOS, 88 Solaris, NetBSD or OpenBSD labels: 89 Under SunOS: 90 dd if=floppy{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/rsdXc bs=1b skip=1 seek=1 91 and Solaris: 92 dd if=floppy{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/rdsk/c0tXd0s2 \ 93 bs=1b skip=1 seek=1 94 95 You need to be sure that your version of dd(1) supports the 96 skip and seek operands, otherwise you can try a technique like: 97 98 dd if=/dev/rsdXc of=/tmp/label bs=1b count=1 99 dd if=floppy{:--:}OSrev.fs of=/dev/rsdXc bs=36b 100 dd if=/tmp/label of=/dev/rsdXc bs=1b count=1 101 102 In either case, you've created a situation where the disklabel 103 and the filesystem information don't agree about the partition 104 size and geometry, however the results will be usable. 105 106Creating a network bootable setup using SunOS or other Un*x-like system: 107 108 The details of setting up a network bootable environment vary 109 considerably, depending on the network's host. Extract the 110 OpenBSD diskless(8) man page from the man{:--:}OSrev.tgz distribution 111 set or see the copy on the OpenBSD web page. You will also 112 need to reference the relevant man pages or administrators guide 113 for the host system. 114 115 Basically, you will need to set up reverse-arp (rarpd) and boot 116 parameter (bootpd) information and make the OpenBSD bootblock, 117 kernel/miniroot partition, and a swap file available as required 118 by the netboot setup. 119 120 121OpenBSDXferPrelude 122 123 124OpenBSDXferBareTape(xbase xfont xserv xshare) 125 126OpenBSDXferNFS 127 128OpenBSDXferFFS 129