Nick, thanks for straightening me out about what is actually going on here with the install. I see that there is now a fresh snapshot with today's date, not the one I downloaded and ran yesterday. This might tend to keep one busy. I'm not sure I would not be better off doing what Bruno & Marc suggested and run sysupgrade. Thanks to them for the advice.
If I do decide to put the filesets on the the install thumbdrive, I see a total of 26 files in the directory. Obviously some are not necessary like the floppy or both the .fs & .iso (just one needed), nor the test instructions, etc. So which files do I REALLY need on my usb thumbdrive to get a complete install, x included? Please excuse the "top-posting". That's the only way my darn google mail does reply's. Kind of irritating, to me and the reader too. Clay On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 12:34 PM Nick Holland <n...@holland-consulting.net> wrote: > On 2019-11-27 21:29, Edgar Pettijohn wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 08:05:30PM -0600, Clay Daniels wrote: > >> I have successfully installed OpenBSD 6.6 release and would like to give > >> the Current Snapshots a try. I went to a mirror, and to: > >> > >> Index of /pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/amd64/ > >> > >> I saw install66.fs (probably for usb memstick) and install66.iso (surely > >> for a cd/dvd) at ~450Mb. I picked the install66.fs, wrote it to a usb > >> thumbdrive, and it starts the install. When i get into the install it > asks > >> where are the file sets? Humm, maybe it gets these online and it tries > to > >> do this but no luck. It was late last night, and I checked to see if it > had > >> written anything to my disk, which it had not, and went to bed. This > >> evening I'm looking a bit deeper at the snapshot directory and I > suspect I > >> need to provide the install with base66.tzg at ~239Mb. > > NO! > > [snip misleading stuff] > > I noticed this also, but hadn't had time to figure out if I had messed > up or > > the installer had. As a general rule I assume its me that messed up. Its > odd > > if you mount the install66.fs you can see the pub/amd64 directory, but > during > > installation it can't seem to find the directory regardless of what I > have > > tried. > > > > Edgar > > First of all...nothing at all to do about snapshots -- the OpenBSD > installation process has remained amazingly stable over the last 20 > years. > New options here and there, but overall, very similar. Unless something > changed in the last few days, installing a snapshot is identical to > installing 6.6. > > The installXX.iso and installXX.fs are complete, stand-alone installation > kits. Everything you need is on them. You can boot from them, and all > the installation files are right there. Look Ma! No network needed! > ...well...unfortunately there is the issue of firmware files, which are > legally not feasible to put on the install media, so you will need network > for most machines eventually. But let's ignore that for now. :) > > Once the system has booted on the install kernel, you have three devices > you are working with: > 1) the install kernel's internal "RAM disk" that is part of bsd.rd which > you booted from, > 2) your target disk > 3) the USB drive with the install files on it. > > The reason you can't see the install files on the USB stick from the > install kernel is they aren't mounted. You didn't boot from the entire > USB stick, you booted from ONE TINY LITTLE bsd.rd file, that just happened > to be sitting on the big USB stick...but as far as bsd.rd is concerned, > the USB stick isn't part of the booted environment (yet). > > You aren't booting from a "Live Media". You are booting from a tiny kernel > with a built in file system that's sitting on the same inert file system as > the install files. > > Read that over and over until you understand what I'm saying, not what you > are assuming is going on. It's really important to understand. It's very > different from many Linux installation processes -- you are running off a > file only 10MB in size which is now completely in RAM. That file JUST > HAPPENED to come from a USB stick that's much bigger. > > So, when it comes to answering where your install files are, they are on > a disk, but it's NOT a mounted disk. It's on your USB drive that's not > mounted now, and won't be after installation, but could be useful shortly. > > Your next problem is...WHICH disk? On a minimal system, it would be the > next sd device after your install disk -- assuming you are installing to > sd0, your USB stick might be sd1. HOWEVER, if you have a flash media > reader > on your system, who knows where it is. One trick would be to unplug your > USB drive and plug it back in and look at the white-on-blue console message > that come up at you. Yes, you are unpluging your boot device, sounds bad, > but read what I wrote earlier, it's no longer using that -- the boot has > completed, and it's running from RAM now, it's completely ignoring that > USB drive. So let's say you do this and you see it's sd4. Tell the > installer the files are coming from a file system not currently mounted > and when it asks, tell it "sd4" > > Nick. > >
