5.4 KiB
If you downloaded your ISO on an OpenBSD system, here is how to create the bootable OpenBSD USB drive:
Connect the USB drive and check the system message buffer:
dmesg | tail
Check to confirm which drive it is, for example, if you think it's sd3:
disklabel sd3
Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it:
doas umount /dev/sd3i
Now write the OpenBSD installer to the drive with dd:
doas dd if=install60.fs of=/dev/rsdXc bs=1M; sync
You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.
Prepare the USB drive (in NetBSD)
This
page
on the NetBSD website shows how to create a NetBSD bootable USB drive
from within NetBSD itself. You should use the dd method documented
there. This will also work with the OpenBSD image.
Prepare the USB drive (in FreeBSD)
This page on
the FreeBSD website shows how to create a bootable USB drive for
installing FreeBSD. Use the dd on that page. You can also use the same
instructions with a OpenBSD ISO image.
Prepare the USB drive (in GNU+Linux)
If you downloaded your ISO on a GNU+Linux system, here is how to create the bootable OpenBSD USB drive:
Connect the USB drive. Check dmesg:
dmesg
Check lsblk to confirm which drive it is:
lsblk
Check that it wasn't automatically mounted. If it was, unmount it. For example:
sudo umount /dev/sdX\*
umount /dev/sdX\*
dmesg told you what device it is. Overwrite the drive, writing your distro ISO to it with dd. For example:
sudo dd if=install61.fs of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync
dd if=install61.fs of=/dev/sdX bs=8M; sync
You should now be able to boot the installer from your USB drive. Continue reading, for information about how to do that.
Installing OpenBSD without full disk encryption
Press C in GRUB to access the command line:
grub> kopenbsd (usb0,openbsd1)/6.1/amd64/bsd.rd
grub> boot
It will start booting into the OpenBSD installer. Follow the normal process for installing OpenBSD.
Installing OpenBSD with full disk encryption
If you are using SeaBIOS, OpenBSD's bootloader will be chainloaded automatically and everything will just work.
Booting
Press C in GRUB to access the command line:
grub> kopenbsd -r sd0a (ahci0,openbsd1)/bsd
grub> boot
OpenBSD will start booting.
Configuring Grub
If you don't want to drop to the GRUB command line and type in a command to boot OpenBSD every time, you can create a GRUB configuration that's aware of your OpenBSD installation and that will automatically be used by GNU Boot.
On your OpenBSD root partition, create the /grub directory and add the file
gnuboot_grub.cfg to it. Inside the gnuboot_grub.cfg add these lines:
default=0
timeout=3
menuentry "OpenBSD" {
kopenbsd -r sd0a (ahci0,openbsd1)/bsd
}
If your OpenBSD installation uses a GPT scheme, use the gpt4 partition
instead of openbsd1.
The next time you boot, you'll see the old Grub menu for a few seconds, then you'll see the a new menu with only OpenBSD on the list. After 3 seconds OpenBSD will boot, or you can hit enter to boot.
Troubleshooting
According to the Libreboot project at a time when it was still fully free, most of the issues occur when using coreboot's 'text mode' instead of the coreboot framebuffer. This mode is useful for booting payloads like memtest86+ which expect text-mode, but for OpenBSD, accodring to Libreboot at the time, it can be problematic when they are trying to switch to a framebuffer because it doesn't exist.
Won't boot...something about file not found
Your device names (i.e. usb0, usb1, sd0, sd1, wd0, ahci0, hd0, etc) and numbers may differ. Use TAB completion.