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I ran into this problem as well at first. The issue is easily overcome as described at the following URL. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#noflopcd http://

I ran into this problem as well at first. The issue is easily overcome as described at the following URL. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#noflopcd http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#noflopcd Can this easily be done from any Linux distribution? AFAIK it can not, instead they waste resources creating USB installs and images.

ciupicri 13y ago
> Can this easily be done from any Linux distribution? Let's see... > Network boot, using PXE (i386 or amd64) or diskless(8) (other platforms). Red Hat and Fedora had this for ages. Also the installa media can be on a FTP, HTTP or NFS server. > External USB CD-ROM or USB floppy, if your machine can boot from one. This should work with most Linux distributions, too. > USB Flash disk or hard disk The same. > Worst case, if none of the above is suitable, you can usually pull the disk out of the target system, use suitable adapters to install it in a "normal" computer, install OpenBSD, then replace the disk back in the target system. Again this should be possible with most Linux distributions. Now does OpenBSD have an automated installer?
- csmuk 13y ago
  > Now does OpenBSD have an automated installer? Yes. You can use expect with /install easily and you can simply add your own local "site set" tgz which can be hosted on a local HTTP/FTP server to apply any local customisations. However, if you're provisioning lots of machines, it's very easy just to "restore" filesystems off a bootable USB stick, mount them, set the hostname then tell ansible/puppet to do the rest. Don't need kickstart or any of that crap. Personally though I'd just netboot lots of systems off PXE/TFTP, NFS mount all filesystems and have local swap disk only. I used to do that with Sun systems. We had 50 SPARCstation 5's booting off a SPARCserver 1000E on Solaris and it worked nicely. OpenBSD works pretty much the same. Linux is a piece of crap to netboot. Plenty of ways to skin that cat.
  - ciupicri 13y ago
    Do you need to modify the install media in order to use expect? I'd like to read more about the process. You can netboot Linux. Knoppix [1] offers Terminal Server which configures DHCP, TFTP and NFS so that you can boot Knoppix from the local network. [1] http://www.knoppix.org/ http://www.knoppix.org/
    - csmuk 13y ago
      Yes you do but you usually netboot to do large installations so this is just a case of adding a new root device with some extra tools on it on your netboot server. There is an official solution in -current that involves DHCP but I don't know the details.

ciupicri 13y ago

> Can this easily be done from any Linux distribution? Let's see... > Network boot, using PXE (i386 or amd64) or diskless(8) (other platforms). Red Hat and Fedora had this for ages. Also the installa media can be on a FTP, HTTP or NFS server. > External USB CD-ROM or USB floppy, if your machine can boot from one. This should work with most Linux distributions, too. > USB Flash disk or hard disk The same. > Worst case, if none of the above is suitable, you can usually pull the disk out of the target system, use suitable adapters to install it in a "normal" computer, install OpenBSD, then replace the disk back in the target system. Again this should be possible with most Linux distributions. Now does OpenBSD have an automated installer?

csmuk 13y ago
> Now does OpenBSD have an automated installer? Yes. You can use expect with /install easily and you can simply add your own local "site set" tgz which can be hosted on a local HTTP/FTP server to apply any local customisations. However, if you're provisioning lots of machines, it's very easy just to "restore" filesystems off a bootable USB stick, mount them, set the hostname then tell ansible/puppet to do the rest. Don't need kickstart or any of that crap. Personally though I'd just netboot lots of systems off PXE/TFTP, NFS mount all filesystems and have local swap disk only. I used to do that with Sun systems. We had 50 SPARCstation 5's booting off a SPARCserver 1000E on Solaris and it worked nicely. OpenBSD works pretty much the same. Linux is a piece of crap to netboot. Plenty of ways to skin that cat.
- ciupicri 13y ago
  Do you need to modify the install media in order to use expect? I'd like to read more about the process. You can netboot Linux. Knoppix [1] offers Terminal Server which configures DHCP, TFTP and NFS so that you can boot Knoppix from the local network. [1] http://www.knoppix.org/ http://www.knoppix.org/
  - csmuk 13y ago
    Yes you do but you usually netboot to do large installations so this is just a case of adding a new root device with some extra tools on it on your netboot server. There is an official solution in -current that involves DHCP but I don't know the details.