> If you have two installs on that one machine, say that up front.

I actually did: "I have 2 ssds each running openbsd, but the UEFI is clearly 
specified to boot against one of the SSDs."

> What makes you "suspect" it installed on tho other disk? Boot into that other 
> install and see for yourself.

What made me suspect that was the absence of mail showing the error. It was 
just a thought. I cannot easily boot into the other system, but I mounted the 
other system, and all files were old and it's still running an old openbsd 
version, so this theory looks incorrect.

> do you have root's email forwarded to a regular account

yes, I do. I can easily check inside /var/log/messages that the ramdisk for 
openbsd 7.8 is loaded, but the install seems to stop too early, and does not 
emit any mail.

> I don't think /bsd.upgrade would choose some _other_ disk

yes, it seems you're right, my theory seems mistaken.

> Why? sysupgrade is supposed to work unattended.

Yes, but as I said, I am in this weird situation where if I only plug a screen 
via HDMI (and do not make any other change), then the sysupgrade works fine. 
That's what I mean by doing it only via ssh, in the sense that is what I'm 
trying to debug.


I've tried to increase the log level in /var/log/messages by replacing *.notif 
by *.debug in /etc/syslog.conf, but no useful error messages there. 

Thanks for your thought. Still a bit lost as to how to proceed, but will try to 
continue to poke around.

> On 25 Dec 2025, at 21:28, Jan Stary <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Dec 25 20:40:28, [email protected] wrote:
>> I am starting to suspect that the booting process
>> installs OpenBSD 7.8 on another disk (on which
> I also have a boot partition).
> 
> Eh.
> 
> If you have two installs on that one machine, say that up front.
> 
> What makes you "suspect" it installed on tho other disk?
> Boot into that other install and see for yourself.
> 
>> That would explain why i have no mail.
> 
> I don't think so. On either of the two installs,
> root gets daily, weekly, monthly emails. To repeat:
> do you have root's email forwarded to a regular account
> whose mail you read? (Also, to be sure: ls -l /var/mail)
> 
>> I am not sure if I can force the boot process to target
>> a specific drive?
> 
> I don't think /bsd.upgrade would choose some _other_ disk
> then the one into which you system regularly boots.
> 
>> obviously the difficulty is to do it only via ssh.
> 
> Why? sysupgrade is supposed to work unattended.
> 

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