[OpenBSD]

4.0 - Installation Guide


4.1 - Overview of the OpenBSD installation procedure

This FAQ now contains installation instructions for OpenBSD 2.8. There may be differences between the 2.8 installation and installation of earlier versions of OpenBSD.

OpenBSD has a very robust text-based install procedure. The OpenBSD install procedure was designed to be adaptable in almost any situation that a user could face. In addition to its robustness, the install procedure can be done using 1 floppy disk. Each architecuture's installation procedure is very similar, however a different set of tools will often be required. Below we will outline the different options that an OpenBSD user has when installing the system.

The following information is architecture independant. Please refer to each architectures installation page or the OpenBSD CD cover for architecture dependant installation information.

4.1.1 - Supported OpenBSD Architectures

OpenBSD 2.8 supports X architectures listed below in alphabetical order. Please refer to each architectures page for specific information on what each architecture supports.

4.1.2 - Supported Installation Media

OpenBSD has the ability to install from multiple media types. The most common and architecture independant options are layed out below. These options can be used after booting from either an OpenBSD CD-ROM or floppy disk. More information on creating OpenBSD installdisk's is located later in this FAQ.

CD-ROM To do a CD-ROM install, you must have either purchased an Official OpenBSD CD-ROM or created your own OpenBSD CD. This is certainly the easiest way to install an OpenBSD system.
NOTE: Official OpenBSD CD's are bootable if your bios supports it.
FTP This installation option allows you to install OpenBSD by downloading the installation packages in realtime over the network. With this option you can choose either a static IP for use or grab an IP via DHCP.
Local Filesystem This option allows you to install from files on a pre-existing filesystem. Support for DOS, EXT2FS and FFS are included on the install disk.

4.1.3 - Creating bootable OpenBSD install floppies.

To create an installation floppy image you must first download the correct boot floppy image from one of the OpenBSD distribution sites. You can find a list of FTP servers at the OpenBSD FTP Distribution page. Each architecture has one floppy image for download except the i386 platform, which has 3 images to choose from. The differences between the i386 platform installation floppies will be outlined below. For the other architectures you will just need to download the respective floppy28.fs image.
NOTE: The cdrom28.fs image can be used to make a bootable OpenBSD installation CD-ROM.

The i386 platform has 3 separate installation disks that you must choose from. The differences between each is outlined below.

Most i386 users will just use the floppy28.fs installation floppy.

Once you have the correct floppy image, you need to get a clean floppy disk. If there are ANY bad sectors on the floppy disk, the installation will most likely fail. If you don't know, use the fdformat(1) command to both format and check for bad sectors.

If your output is like the above example, then your disk is OK. However, if you do not see ALL "V"'s then your disk is most likely bad, and you should try a new one. If you are formatting in MS-DOS, simply use the DOS format command.

Once you have a clean, formatted floppy it is time to write the installation image to floppy. If you are creating this on an OpenBSD machine or another UNIX-like OS, you can use the dd(1) utility. an example usage of dd(1) is below:

Once the image is written, check to make sure that the copied image is the same as the original with the following command. If the test passes, you will just see another prompt.

Again, if you are creating this image on the Windows/DOS platform you can get tools from the tools directory on any of the ftp mirrors, or in 2.8/tools directory on CD1 on the OpenBSD CD. For users of Windows, rawrite will be all you need to write your boot floppy.

If you use NT, rawrite will not work for you. You can, however, use fdimage or ntrw to write the boot floppy. Both of which are availible on the ftp sites (linked above), or the OpenBSD CD. Here are example usages for each program.

4.1.4 - Booting OpenBSD Installation Images.

This section is initially broken down into architecture dependant sections for popular architectures that OpenBSD supports. This is so we can properly instruct each user on the what to do on thier respective platform.

Booting i386

Booting sparc