Re: OpenBSD thumbdrives
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 9:05 PM, Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nick Guenther wrote: On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:22 PM, Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Besides, the finished flash drive is wonderfully useful. :) (I've got a 4G, partitioned out as 2G OpenBSD, 2G FAT32, which is bootable on OpenBSD and still usable as a Windows flash drive, as well. Only problem I have is I keep buying the super-cheap flash drives which work great until you sit on them.) (the proper solution is to boot OpenBSD (inc. off a CDROM or floppy), partition and format the media, install MBR, install kernel, install /boot, install PBR. If you can do that without error, you can probably skip the OpenBSD install script, just manually copy files onto your target machine. i.e., not worth the effort, probably. I know how to do it, and I rarely do so without error). Hey Nick, Inspired by you (and the realization hey, I've got a 20$ 4gig thumbdrive now because I'm in the FUTAR), today I set about making myself one of these. I made a 2gig OpenBSD a partition, and a 2gig FAT i partition using OpenBSD's newfs_msdos. The trouble is, Windows Vista doesn't want to recognize it. It sees the partition, of course, but claims it's unformatted. I set the partition ID in the MBR to 0B initially, then to 0C, and then to 06 (which is what another flash drive that vista does recognize has on it) but none of these made Vista recognize it. I'm assuming the problem is that OpenBSD wrote the FAT wrong, so I'm wondering how it was that you formatted your drive. Did you just get windows to do it for you? -othernick Actually, it's a bug in windows. Whodda thunk? :) The problem is Windows sees a removable device, and it is ready for multiple partitions...but it only seems to recognize the FIRST partition as something than it could work with. So..it tries to make sense of the OpenBSD partition, fails, and doesn't look past it to see the Windows partition. SO, the secret is to put your Windows partition on the flash media first, then OpenBSD. Oh. .. stupid Windows! Thanks for the tip, I'll try this tonight. -othernick
Re: OpenBSD thumbdrives
Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The problem is Windows sees a removable device, and it is ready for multiple partitions...but it only seems to recognize the FIRST partition as something than it could work with. So..it tries to make sense of the OpenBSD partition, fails, and doesn't look past it to see the Windows partition. Nor really relevant to this but slightly related - back when we had Windows machines with floppy drives, we discovered that inserting an OpenBSD install floppy in the drive on a Windows machine while the file manager (Explorer) was open would make the system crash quite reliably. I wouldn't be very surprised to find that modern Microsoft systems behave the same way, but I have no way to test these days (unless of course i dig out that USB floppy drive and hook it up) -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/ Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.
Re: OpenBSD thumbdrives
Nick Holland wrote: Once your partition exists, however, Windows can format it. I prefer to format media with the native OS. It may be worth noting that Windows Vista (and I believe XP SP2+) will no longer format drives larger than 32gb as FAT/FAT32. If you have an existing drive (less than 8TB) it'll work fine, but if you want to reformat it Windows will insist on NTFS. Obviously, it's an artificial limitation. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006 http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm may help, it's a GPL Windows format utility designed to work around this limitation.
OpenBSD thumbdrives
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:22 PM, Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Besides, the finished flash drive is wonderfully useful. :) (I've got a 4G, partitioned out as 2G OpenBSD, 2G FAT32, which is bootable on OpenBSD and still usable as a Windows flash drive, as well. Only problem I have is I keep buying the super-cheap flash drives which work great until you sit on them.) (the proper solution is to boot OpenBSD (inc. off a CDROM or floppy), partition and format the media, install MBR, install kernel, install /boot, install PBR. If you can do that without error, you can probably skip the OpenBSD install script, just manually copy files onto your target machine. i.e., not worth the effort, probably. I know how to do it, and I rarely do so without error). Hey Nick, Inspired by you (and the realization hey, I've got a 20$ 4gig thumbdrive now because I'm in the FUTAR), today I set about making myself one of these. I made a 2gig OpenBSD a partition, and a 2gig FAT i partition using OpenBSD's newfs_msdos. The trouble is, Windows Vista doesn't want to recognize it. It sees the partition, of course, but claims it's unformatted. I set the partition ID in the MBR to 0B initially, then to 0C, and then to 06 (which is what another flash drive that vista does recognize has on it) but none of these made Vista recognize it. I'm assuming the problem is that OpenBSD wrote the FAT wrong, so I'm wondering how it was that you formatted your drive. Did you just get windows to do it for you? -othernick
Re: OpenBSD thumbdrives
Nick Guenther wrote: On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:22 PM, Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Besides, the finished flash drive is wonderfully useful. :) (I've got a 4G, partitioned out as 2G OpenBSD, 2G FAT32, which is bootable on OpenBSD and still usable as a Windows flash drive, as well. Only problem I have is I keep buying the super-cheap flash drives which work great until you sit on them.) (the proper solution is to boot OpenBSD (inc. off a CDROM or floppy), partition and format the media, install MBR, install kernel, install /boot, install PBR. If you can do that without error, you can probably skip the OpenBSD install script, just manually copy files onto your target machine. i.e., not worth the effort, probably. I know how to do it, and I rarely do so without error). Hey Nick, Inspired by you (and the realization hey, I've got a 20$ 4gig thumbdrive now because I'm in the FUTAR), today I set about making myself one of these. I made a 2gig OpenBSD a partition, and a 2gig FAT i partition using OpenBSD's newfs_msdos. The trouble is, Windows Vista doesn't want to recognize it. It sees the partition, of course, but claims it's unformatted. I set the partition ID in the MBR to 0B initially, then to 0C, and then to 06 (which is what another flash drive that vista does recognize has on it) but none of these made Vista recognize it. I'm assuming the problem is that OpenBSD wrote the FAT wrong, so I'm wondering how it was that you formatted your drive. Did you just get windows to do it for you? -othernick Actually, it's a bug in windows. Whodda thunk? :) The problem is Windows sees a removable device, and it is ready for multiple partitions...but it only seems to recognize the FIRST partition as something than it could work with. So..it tries to make sense of the OpenBSD partition, fails, and doesn't look past it to see the Windows partition. SO, the secret is to put your Windows partition on the flash media first, then OpenBSD. You can create the partitions with OpenBSD, just make sure your Windows partition is before your OpenBSD partition. In fact, you probably will find you NEED to create the partition in OpenBSD, as Windows sees a USB flash drive and makes assumptions about what you are going to do with it. Once your partition exists, however, Windows can format it. I prefer to format media with the native OS. (The observant will note that I've not made it clear if it should be the first physical partition on the disk, or the first partition in the partition table. I'm not sure which it has to be. Feel free to experiment, but I've just always made Windows first in both, at least after the last time it bit me, when I was 100+km from home dropping off some systems for a friend of mine that I *thought* were sufficiently tested...and without the stuff needed to rebuild the flash media properly. That makes it so much easier to remember :). When done, Windows will see one partition, and it will be usable. Note: this isn't just USB thumbdrives, it is also CF flash media in a USB adapter. Not sure about USB HD (no idea) or CF in an IDE adapter (I'm guessing it would be ok with that). Just don't sit on that $20 thumb drive, at least, unless you can resolder the joints between the USB plug and the circuit board. :) Nick.
