On 12/23/17 00:23, Philip Mundhenk wrote: > Are there any tools for cloning an OpenBSD installation as a live > disk, like the ones in the in the Debian (Respin; Remastersys) and > Mandrake (Makecd?) families of Gnu/Linuxes? Or any reasonably > painless way of making a customized OpenBSD live disk?
Live CD? Do people still do that? There are ways, not worth the trouble. Sheesh. CDROMs are so ... 1990s, apparently. Live USB? Sure. Just (get this) INSTALL TO A USB DRIVE! (what a surprise, huh?). Just a normal install. Really. When it asks what drive to install on, point it to your USB drive. Ok, ok, people love to twist knobs to say they DID SOMETHING unique and special, so here are a few tips: * Don't bother to install compXX.tgz. It's slow to install on a flash drive, and you are unlikely to be compiling anything. * Create lots of "/etc/hostname.xx0" files (or hard link them all) for every NIC you are likely to encounter. contents of the file: "dhcp" * noatime and softdeps are not just your friend, but just about required on a flash drive (/etc/fstab) * Encrypting your flash drive is a good idea. I lose mine all the time. Bad to lose your ssh keys or whatever it is you are trying to carry around with you, worse to have someone else find them (bioctl). * change the code in /boot from saying ">> OpenBSD/amd64 BOOT 3.33" to "HaHa! your machine is now infected with a virus", and "boot>" to "you're screwed>". Or "UR Skrewd>" to make it look more authentic. At least when you lose your flash drive, you will get a good laugh knowing what will happen when someone finds it and wonders what's on it! (and cool thing is, since they will probably try to boot it on a Windows machine...and they are prone to stupidly sticking things in their computer, the message is very possibly right!) (man release) * A small MFS /tmp might be a really good idea if your apps use it. (mount_mfs) * Put an FAT partition at the beginning of the disk, that way it's still handy to move files around...double duty! You will probably have to partition it on OpenBSD, last I looked, Windows doesn't believe there is any reason to partition removable media (heh), but it will use just FAT partitions if they exist "somehow". (fdisk, newfs_msdos) * If you really use this a lot, maybe invest in a USB SSD rather than USB Flash drive. Nick.
