Installion on Eee PC

[dalek]

Originally Posted by ocicat

I don't prefer solutions like the following, but for those who don't already have an OpenBSD installation which they can leverage to build USB install media, there aren't a lot of choices:

jggimi's live CD may also be of use:

Hi there, I'm currently on a quest to get OBSD on my Asus Eee PC as well. Unfortunately, all I have currently is the netbook, and a mac (os x).

I found the above site this past weekend and it looks like it should work. However, the program I'm using to write the image to the stick is... well, not great, and I don't think it's working (at least, my BIOS is set to boot the removeable media first, and it doesn't boot).

I'd love to hear what someone on here would do in my situation, or what the OP ended up doing to figure out what the bad BIOS juju was (I wouldn't be shocked if it was as simple as that).

[jggimi]

ooh, that's true, rocket. Though it does require some a priori knowledge of OpenBSD system administration.

In brief the steps for i386 would be:

1. insert USB stick in platform with bootable media (diskette, cd, network)
2. Boot ramdisk kernel (bsd.rd) and drop to shell
3. fdisk(8) to (re)initialize MBR and create OpenBSD MBR partition.
4. disklabel(8) to create an OpenBSD partition.
5. newfs(8) to format the partition
6. mount(8) the partition, then cd to it.
7. run dhclient(8) to obtain an IP address, or use ifconfig(8) to manually configure a NIC.
8. obtain the filesets and kernels from nearest mirror using ftp(1). I can't remember if -o is required, but ftp(1) is included in the ramdisk kernel.
9. copy /usr/mdec/boot to the partition
10. run installboot(8) from /usr/mdec, using /usr/mdec/biosboot and the boot file copied to the partition.
11. cd / and umount(8) the USB's partition.
12. unplug USB and boot it in the destination system.

[barry]

Hi dalek,

I've been using OpenBSD for a while now, I just found this forum, so here goes my initial post.

I agree that rocket357 has a really good idea, but I think jggimi's instructions are a bit too complicated. Of course mine might be even worse... This is basically the same as jggimi, except I would let the OpenBSD installer take care of his steps 3 thru 11.

(I'm assuming you don't want to dual boot with XP, I used to do that and find it to be more of a headache than it's worth, and I'd rather not waste the drive space.)

I would do this:

1. Download install48.iso from an OpenBSD mirror such as ftp.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.8/i386/install48.iso

2. Burn install48.iso to a CD

3a. Install to the eeepc with an external USB CD drive using the install48 CD if you can, or

3b. Install to a USB flash drive (2GB+) by using any i386 box using the install48 CD
- plug in the USB flash drive
- insert install48 CD into drive
- start system, boot from the CD
- go through the standard install procedure, be careful to install OpenBSD on the flash drive, Mom won't be happy if you wipe out her XP c:\ drive with all the kids' pictures on it...

4. Prepare the USB flash drive with the OpenBSD install sets. (You could skip this part if you just want to download all the install sets again using the ftp option during install.)
- boot the OpenBSD flash drive on Mom's computer again
- login
- mount the install48 CD with something like: # mount /dev/cd0a /mnt
- copy the install sets to the USB drive: # cp -Rp /mnt/4.8 /
- now you have the install sets in the root of the USB flash drive.
(If you know your way around the command line, you could copy the install sets from CD at the the end of step 3b instead of booting the USB a second time.)

5. Use the USB flash drive with OpenBSD to install to the eeepc
- boot the eeepc off your OpenBSD flash drive
- at the "boot>" prompt type: "boot bsd.rd", this will start the installation procedure.
- do a standard install, when it asks for install media type "disk"
- when it asks if the disk is already mounted say yes
- the install sets are already in 4.8/i386/ so you can just take the default when it asks.

Hope that helps.

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by barry

I...I just found this forum, so here goes my initial post.

Welcome to our funny family!

When it comes to installing on a machine without a CD drive, & no other machine is available with OpenBSD already installed, you have one of the simpler solutions:

Plug in a USB CD drive & install from it.

Good call!

This assumes that another machine is available which can be used to burn the ISO to disc. Burning is OS agnostic.

Otherwise, another machine will have to be booted in some manner with OpenBSD, (booting another machine with the ISO mentioned before...) -- be it the installation kernel bsd.rd used by install48.iso or the regular kernel bsd which is used by any running system. jggimi's live CD is another option.

Once a system has been booted with any OpenBSD kernel, manually build a bootable USB drive, either with only the bsd.rd kernel, or with bsd.rd + all file sets.

[rocket357]

Here's my routine for installing to a machine with no CD drive (very much the same as barry's, but with a few tweaks at the end):

1) download and burn install48.iso or cd48.iso.
2) On a machine with a CD drive, insert the burned install disk.
3) Check that the BIOS is set to boot from CD first.
4) Plug in the usb key and boot the CD.
5) Perform a normal install to the usb key (make SURE you don't install to the wrong disk! Make one slice and don't worry about swap...this is for installing, not for running OpenOffice/Firefox/etc...)
6) Boot bsd.rd on the cd-less machine using the newly installed usb key.
7) Perform a normal install to the cd-less machine's hard drive.

If you're particularly lazy (as I am), you can download the tgz's, bsd*, and INSTALL.<arch> files and put them in /4.8/<arch>/ on the USB key so you can install from there. You can also create a site48.tgz file that contains all of your customizations that will get installed last.

And you can fix the usb key's /etc/fstab to use the drive id (checksum, really) instead of device name:
(Posted to misc by Paul de Weerd)

[ -f /dev/diskmap ] || ( cd /dev; sudo MAKEDEV diskmap )
echo wq | disklabel -E YOURDISK
UID=`disklabel YOURDISK | grep -E '^[d]?uid:' | cut -f2 -d' '`
{ echo ",s#/dev/YOURDISK#${UID}.#"; echo w; } | ed - /etc/fstab

(standard disclaimer: don't run this without understanding what it does...oh, and this was committed just before the lock for 4.8, so it won't work on 4.7)

And you can create dhcp-enabling hostname files for all ethernet drivers in /etc on the usb key (only the attached devices have their hostname files read).

Standard disclaimers apply (backup your data, don't blame me, etc...)

Edit - If you have a usb-attached CD drive, use that method. It's far easier (though once you have a usb-key with a no-kidding OpenBSD install on it, you can use it over and over again and even upgrade it to newer versions...etc...)

[barry]

Appreciate the welcome ocicat, hope I can be of help, I know I can use some. Using a USB CD drive just kind of slipped out, I've had trouble with them in the past, especially on older computers.

Thanks rocket, I completely forgot about my problems booting flash drives. If I don't use the same box, I often have to go in and edit the fstab, and reboot. I really need to start using the new UID drive signatures.

P.S. OpenBSD flash drives are very useful. At work I have our Certificate Authority on a flash drive in the filing cabinet and just boot it a couple times a year when I need to mess with certificates.

[Daisuke_Aramaki]

I used a similar approach like rocket's. But i do agree, if you could lay your hands on a usb cd device, use it. That is so much easier.

So what model do you have? I have 1000H, and it 4.8 works like a charm. Started out with 4.4 on this machine.

[jggimi]

Mine is a 1005HA with a 3-cell battery instead of the standard 6-cell, and without bluetooth. I love it. Its a variant called the model 1005HAB and was sold last year by a US-based retail chain. It was a gift from my wife, who chose it based on price. But I like this particular brand of hardware, and was very grateful for the netbook.

I actually love having the smaller battery in this -- it doesn't have more than a couple of hours of battery life, but .... it is very very light weight.