On Apr 6, 2014, at 14:43, Tomas Bodzar <tomas.bod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 7:09 PM, Norman Gray <nor...@astro.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Greetings.
>>
>> I'm trying to install the released OpenBSD 5.4 onto a old-ish netbook
>> without an optical drive. I thought I could do this via
>> install54.iso; I can see where I need to get to, and can almost get
>> there, but I can't find the last step.
>>
>> I suspect this needs only a 1- or 2-line answer.
>>
>> Target machine (not ideal, admittedly):
>>
>> * Acer Aspire One ZG8 ('no, don't throw it out, I'll try OpenBSD on
>> it!') [1]
>> * ...so i386
>> * Internal disk
>> * No optical drive, but two USB ports and an SD slot
>> * Previously had Windows on it *shudder*
>> * No dmesg, I'm afraid, since part of my problem is an inability to
>> mount any storage.
>>
>> I can boot the machine with the floppy.fs image (dd'ed to a flash
>> drive), and go through the configuration, accepting defaults, and
>> whole-disk partitioning the internal disk, to the point where I select
>> the full installation media. This I can't do.
>>
>> Problem 0 is that the boot fails to detect networking hardware. I
>> understand that the wireless interface doesn't work on this machine
>> with OpenBSD, but that the wired one should work [2]. However the
>> wired interface _isn't_ detected, and the installation script goes
>> straight from 'System hostname?' to 'DNS domain name?' even though
>> it's plugged in to an ethernet network which is offering DHCP
>> services. I can't see anything in the dmesg that's relevant (no 'fxp'
>> or 'vlan'). I'm reasonably confident the network is behaving as it
>> should, but it's _possible_, though unlikely, that the wired interface
>> is simply broken (the machine's previous owner only ever used it
>> wireless). But there's not much to go on, and I'm uncertain how to
>> debug this further.
>>
>> But it's OK!: I can install it from install54.iso, also dd'ed to a
>> flash drive. (the machine's intended for offline use, so 'never
>> connected to the internet' would be a somewhat desirable property).
>>
>> And this is where I'm stuck.
>>
>> The install54.iso isn't bootable in this context, but all I need to do
>> is to boot the machine using floppy.fs, then mount the install54 flash
>> drive, and give that as the 'disks' target.
>>
>> But (plan A) if I select 'disks' as the location of the sets, the
>> only device that comes up is the internal hard disk, and this is true
>> whether I have the install54 flash drive plugged in to the second USB
>> port, alongside the floppy.fs drive on a USB expander, or burned to an
>> SD card. Again, nothing obviously relevant in dmesg -- I can see the
>> wd0 device being detected, but no obvious 'USB failure'. The USB port/bus
>> works, since that's where the bootable floppy.fs is sitting.
>>
>> OK, Plan B. The second-stage boot is detecting three devices (namely
>> internal hard disk, plus the floppy.fs drive and the install54 drive):
>> 'hd0', 'hd1', 'hd2'. So I try booting directly from there:
>>
>> boot> b hd0:/5.4/i386/bsd
>>
>> (and so on through hd{0,1,2}{,a,c}:, with and without the leading
>> slash, ..., -- I'm getting a bit desperate here), but I get 'no such
>> file or directory' or 'invalid argument'. Looking at 'm diskinfo'
>> tells me that there are three devices there (which is what I expect),
>> but not much more.
>>
>> I'm vague about the details, but I have a reasonably secure schematic
>> understanding of the boot process, which doesn't conflict with what I
>> read in [3]. I'd be interested to know what I'm missing or
>> misunderstanding.
>>
>> Plan C: create a custom installer (eg [4, 5]). That appears to depend
>> on having a working OpenBSD system, to call /usr/mdec/installboot.
>> But I don't -- the other OSs I have to hand are OS X and FreeBSD.
>>
>> Plan d (not worth a capital letter): it looks like I could try copying
>> /bsd from /5.4/i386/bsd to the top of that filesystem and... see what
>> happens, but (a) I run into filesystem support limitations on OS X,
>> and (b) even if I dealt with that, I'd still have to make the modified
>> filesystem bootable. bless(8) [6] is the broad analogue of
>> installboot on OS X, but I suspect it's specific to both HFS+ and to
>> Apple's BIOS, so this seems unlikely to work. Even then, 'flailing
>> around blindly' is never a good problem solving strategy.
>>
>> Plan e: I could try booting the Mac with the floppy.fs, doing an
>> OpenBSD install onto another flash drive, making _that_ bootable,
>> and... no. On my main work machine, that could go very wrong very
>> quickly (!), and I'm not even going to go there unless I'm very
>> confident I know what I'm doing.
>>
>> So there I am. Plans A and B seem tantalisingly close to a solution,
>> but missing a final step. Writing out the email hasn't produced an
>> 'aha!'; a fair amount of googling suggests I'm not missing anything
>> terribly obvious (somewhat surprisingly: this is a slightly odd
>> configuration I'm attempting, but not insanely exotic); the
>> misc@openbsd.org list doesn't appear to be searchable (right?). So I
>> seem to have exhausted the DIY possibilities. Therefore...
>>
>> Dear list: What is the one line I'm missing?
>>
>
>
> Plan F) - Did you try latest -current ?
>
>
>
>>
>> Thanks for any pointers.
>>
>
>
> Devs and list need to see your dmesg output for sure (it can be posted
> somewhere as screenshots via link)
>
>
>>
>> Norman
>>
>>
>>
>> [1] http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB102059&cv=820
>> [2] http://www.darwinsys.com/openbsd/laptops.html
>> [3] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#Boot386
>> [4] http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140225072408
>> [5]
>> http://blog.breeno.net/2014/02/creating-flexible-openbsd-usb-installer.html
>> [6]
>> https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man8/bless.8.html
>>
>>
>> --
>> Norman Gray : http://nxg.me.uk
>> SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
>
Not sure if this helps, but I have OpenBSD running (very well) on an old
Atom-based Asus eeepc netbook.
I always install it by PXE-booting the installer. If you have never tried this
approach, it involves a bit of
setup but works really well.
Jordon
