Joe S wrote:
On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Joe S <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Has anyone been able to configure a usb flash drive to boot a snapshot
install? I don't like to burn so many cd's. I tried to install via
PXE, but the laptop I use (Thinkpad X24) doesn't support PXE. I've
been able to install 4.3 from usb flash drive thanks to these
instructions: http://www.azbsd.org/~marco/openbsd/flashkeyinstaller/
Let me clarify what I'm trying to do.
I'm not trying to install OpenBSD on a flash drive.
I'm trying to install OpenBSD on a laptop, with the flash drive being
the bootable source of the installation, much like a CD.
I can't PXE and I'm trying to find a way to avoid burning CD's,
although I may buy some CD-RW's if I have to.
As others already pointed out:
-Install OpenBSD on a flash drive.
-Copy a bsd.rd on the flash drive. You can even copy one for amd64 (and
call it bsd_amd64.rd), i386 (bsd_i386.rd), etc...
-Copy the install packages on the flash drive, e.g. in /openbsd/amd64/*,
/openbsd/i386/*, etc...
-Boot the portable from the flash drive. At the boot prompt enter
"bsd_amd64.rd".
-Select the hard drive of the portable as installation target.
-Select the appropriate directory of the sources, e.g. /openbsd/amd64.
-Complete the install.
-Reboot the portable without the flash drive. The portable should now
start booting from the hard drive.
PS: No CD's were harmed during this installation process. This is how I
installed OpenBSD on my eeepc.
Final note: it's possible that you have to change /etc/fstab to reflect
the hardware change after removing the flash drive (e.g. sd1 becomes
sd0). The rest is up to you.
HTH,
Stijn
