Hello,

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, frantisek holop wrote:

quoted text
> hmm, on Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 11:21:40AM -0500, Nick Holland said that
>> frantisek holop wrote:
>>> hmm, on Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 09:45:27AM -0500, Nick Holland said that
>>>> (short version: just do a normal install to the flash disk)
>>>
>>> how do i boot bsd.rd to make an install to the flash disk?
>>> chicken egg.  i dont have an usb cdrom, nor floppy disk.
>>> only usb media.  i need to create a bootable usb media...
>>>
>>> -f
>>
>> see the referenced thread...
>>
>> Prep the install device on another machine.  Other machine just needs
>
> should have been clearer probably...
> i am on the road.  there is no other machine...
> all i have is the eee and the internet and the usb media.
>
>
> my understanding of the boot process process for i386 tells me,
> all i need is ia bootsector from someone who already has an openbsd
> bootable usb media and the instructions which bytes to change
> based on what :) (where is boot(8) on my usb media)
>

see man installboot and man biosboot: you can't do this easily because
installboot will patch biosboot for the locationinfo of boot. And you don't
have this information beforehand.

quoted text
> OR
>
> something like the zaurus process...  install a linux package
> and can run bsd.rd directly from linux.  i think this one is
> becoming more and more needed for i386 too, in this world of
> floppyless, cdromless devices...  a little utility that
> can run bsd.rd from linux/dos...
>
>> but it would be cheaper to just prep it on another machine. :)
>
> i definitely agree.  but if someone is so intimate with the
> boot sector code that can give me this info, saves a lot of
> hassle for me.  thats why i wrote to the list, maybe someone
> really is...
>
>
>> (some people will say dd the floppy image onto the flash device, but
>> the functionality of that depends upon your BIOS's USB boot code.
>
> i havent tried this one yet, but just for the kicks i tried
> cd42.iso an that of course didnt work.

dd floppy image does boot on the eee, but biosboot stops with "ERR M".
Installing OpenBSD to an USB stick definitly works. One other solution might be
"flashboot", see "http://www.mindrot.org/projects/flashboot/". There are binary
images available at "http://tilde.se/flashboot/". "zcat GENERIC-RD.image | dd
of=/dev/sd0" under Linux on the eee should give you a bootable USB-Stick
(/dev/sd0 as an example). But I didn't try this myself.

Anyway, OpenBSD will boot but ethernet does not work: The wired adapter is not
suppoerted, and the wireless driver reports an error and does not work :-(

Regards

Stefan Kell