On 09/25/14 03:16, ML mail wrote:
> Hi Nick,
>
> Thanks for your detailed analysis of my situation.
> I started first with updating my AMI BIOS firmware and now
> have the latest version available from July 2014, before it
> was a version of February 2014.
>
> So what I tried is to format my USB key as MS-DOS/FAT (using
> the Disk Utility of Mac OS X)
I doubt that would work.
It isn't a matter of formatting the disk, you have to get a valid
MBR on it. Windows won't even do that by default anymore. You will
need an old DOS or Windows 9x boot disk or a utility to put a PC
compatible MBR on the disk. This is the bit of code that starts the
boot process on a PC, see details of how it all works in FAQ 14.
I'd suspect the MacOSX process would leave in place whatever MBR was in
place on the media before...probably the OpenBSD MBR you had before.
There are some Windows utilities out there for making flash drives
bootable DOS devices.
> and then install OpenBSD via PXE onto that USB key as suggested
> by not using the whole disk at fdisk but by using the (E)dit
> the MBR option. You will find the details of my actions in fdisk
> below in this mail. This unfortunately did not work but I might
> have done something wrong in the fdisk config (see below).
see my comments below.
> The option of rebooting the hardware after installing OpenBSD
> and then using a boot disk with Windows and run an "FDISK /MBR"
> is simply not possible due to the fact that as soon as OpenBSD
> is installed on a media on that serer it does not boot anymore,
> it gets stuck at the AMI BIOS screen. I have to remove the
> device containing the OpenBSD installation in order to get
> past the BIOS screen again.
yes, but you can do this from another computer... move the disk.
>
> Regards
> ML
>
>
> Available disks are: sd0.
> Which disk is the root disk? ('?' for details) [sd0]
> Use DUIDs rather than device names in fstab? [yes]
> Disk: sd0 geometry: 958/255/32 [7821312 Sectors]
> Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55
> Starting Ending LBA Info:
> #: id C H S - C H S [ start: size ]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 0: 0B 0 0 3 - 958 125 32 [ 2: 7821310 ] Win95
> FAT-32
> 1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
> 2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
> 3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
whoa. that's kinda kinky -- partition starting at sector 3?? Ouch.
Might work, might not. Definitely not standard. Probably an artifact
of the OSX setup.
> Use (W)hole disk or (E)dit the MBR? [whole] E
>
> You will now create a single MBR partition to contain your OpenBSD data. This
> partition must have an id of 'A6'; must *NOT* overlap other partitions; and
> must be marked as the only active partition. Inside the fdisk command, the
> 'manual' command describes all the fdisk commands in detail.
>
> Disk: sd0 geometry: 958/255/32 [7821312 Sectors]
> Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55
> Starting Ending LBA Info:
> #: id C H S - C H S [ start: size ]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 0: 0B 0 0 3 - 958 125 32 [ 2: 7821310 ] Win95
> FAT-32
> 1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
> 2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
> 3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
> Enter 'help' for information
> fdisk: 1> edit 0
> Starting Ending LBA Info:
> #: id C H S - C H S [ start: size ]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 0: 0B 0 0 3 - 958 125 32 [ 2: 7821310 ] Win95
> FAT-32
> Partition id ('0' to disable) [0 - FF]: [B] (? for help) A6
> Do you wish to edit in CHS mode? [n]
> Partition offset: [2]
> Partition size: [7821310]
> fdisk:*1> flag 0
> Partition 0 marked active.
> fdisk:*1> write
> Writing MBR at offset 0.
> fdisk: 1> quit
right idea, you did things as I suggested, but you started with
(probably) an OpenBSD MBR, so that's still there, and added an oddly
located partition.
Nick.
