- Advance Praise for Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition
- Dedication
- About the Author
- About the Technical Reviewer
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Getting Additional Help
- 2. Installation Preparations
- 3. Installation Walk-Through
- 4. Post-Install Setup
- 5. The Boot Process
- 6. User Management
- 7. Root, and How to Avoid It
- The Root Password
- Using Groups
- Hiding Root with sudo
- Using sudo
- sudoedit
- The Biggest sudo Mistake: Exclusions
- sudo Logs
- 8. Disks and Filesystems
- Device Nodes
- DUIDs and /etc/fstab
- MBR Partitions and fdisk(8)
- Labeling Disks
- The Fast File System
- What’s Currently Mounted?
- Mounting and Unmounting Partitions
- How Full Is That Partition?
- Adding New Hard Disks
- 9. More Filesystems
- 10. Securing Your System
- 11. Overview of TCP/IP
- 12. Connecting to the Network
- 13. Software Management
- 14. Everything /etc
- /etc Across Unix Variants
- The /etc Files
- /etc/adduser.conf
- /etc/amd
- /etc/authpf
- /etc/bgpd.conf
- /etc/boot.conf
- /etc/changelist
- /etc/chio.conf
- /etc/csh.*
- /etc/daily and /etc/daily.local
- /etc/dhclient.conf
- /etc/dhcpd.conf
- /etc/disklabels/
- /etc/disktab
- /etc/dumpdates
- /etc/dvmrpd.conf
- /etc/exports
- /etc/fbtab
- /etc/firmware
- /etc/fonts/
- /etc/fstab
- /etc/ftpchroot
- /etc/ftpusers
- /etc/gettytab
- /etc/group
- /etc/hostapd.conf
- /etc/hostname.*
- /etc/hosts
- /etc/hosts.equiv
- /etc/hosts.lpd
- /etc/hotplug/
- /etc/ifstated.conf
- /etc/iked/, /etc/iked.conf, /etc/ipsec.conf, and /etc/isakmpd
- /etc/inetd.conf
- /etc/kbdtype
- /etc/kerberosV/
- /etc/ksh.kshrc
- /etc/ldap/ and /etc/ldapd.conf
- /etc/localtime
- /etc/locate.rc
- /etc/login.conf
- /etc/lynx.cfg
- /etc/magic
- /etc/mail/
- /etc/mail.rc
- /etc/mailer.conf
- /etc/man.conf
- /etc/master.passwd, /etc/passwd, /etc/spwd.db, and /etc/pwd.db
- /etc/mixerctl.conf
- /etc/mk.conf
- /etc/moduli
- /etc/monthly and /etc/monthly.local
- /etc/motd
- /etc/mrouted.conf
- /etc/mtree/
- /etc/mygate
- /etc/myname
- /etc/netstart
- /etc/networks
- /etc/newsyslog.conf
- /etc/nginx/
- /etc/nsd.conf
- /etc/ntpd.conf
- /etc/ospf6d.conf and /etc/ospfd.conf
- /etc/pf.conf and /etc/pf.os
- /etc/ppp/
- /etc/printcap
- /etc/protocols
- /etc/rbootd.conf
- /etc/rc.*
- /etc/relayd.conf
- /etc/remote
- /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/resolv.conf.tail
- /etc/ripd.conf
- /etc/rmt
- /etc/rpc
- /etc/sasyncd.conf
- /etc/sensorsd.conf
- /etc/services
- /etc/shells
- /etc/skel/
- /etc/sliphome/
- /etc/snmpd.conf
- /etc/ssh/
- /etc/ssl/
- /etc/sudoers
- /etc/sysctl.conf
- /etc/syslog.conf
- /etc/systrace/
- /etc/termcap
- /etc/ttys
- /etc/weekly and /etc/weekly.local
- /etc/wsconsctl.conf
- /etc/X11
- /etc/ypldap.conf
- 15. System Maintenance
- 16. Network Servers
- 17. Desktop OpenBSD
- 18. Kernel Configuration
- 19. Building Custom Kernels
- 20. Upgrading
- 21. Packet Filtering
- 22. Advanced PF
- 23. Customizing OpenBSD
- A. Afterword
- Index
- About the Author
- Copyright
USB Installation Media
For many people, burning a CD to install an operating system seems like a waste. They prefer to write an image to a USB flash drive and install from that. OpenBSD doesn’t provide such an image, but if you’re willing to do some extra work, you can create a bootable USB device that you can use to install on your target hardware.
The official recommendation is to install OpenBSD on the USB device, copy bsd.rd and the file sets to that device, and use that to install your new hardware. The OpenBSD installer lets you choose the target hard drive. You select the USB device in the installer, and OpenBSD installs to the USB just as it would any other data-storage device. But how do you install OpenBSD on the USB device without burning a CD in the first place? There are a few ways around this, including a couple of approaches already covered in this chapter.
Using a Virtual Machine
Your first choice is to perform the USB installation in a virtual machine. Many desktop virtual machine software packages let you attach a physical USB port to a guest virtual machine. (OpenBSD’s virtualization options are discussed in Virtualizing OpenBSD.)
If you have virtualization software that runs OpenBSD and supports USB, choose this option.
Running a Diskless Installation
Your second choice is to run a diskless installation. Most DHCP servers embedded in cheap home hardware will let you send a filename and a TFTP server address to a client. If yours won’t, you can get suitable DHCP servers for any platform. You can find freely available TFTP servers for just about any operating system.
Boot your install target with the USB drive, but load the bsd.rd kernel. You now have the OpenBSD installer running on the target system, and an OpenBSD system that fits in your pocket and that you can run almost anywhere. If you’re already running OpenBSD on something with the right architecture and a USB socket, it’s even easier: You boot the system from the appropriate bsd.rd, choose the disk option, and point the installer to sets in a local directory.
Converting ISO Images
As a less official method, you can find software to convert ISO images to bootable USB images. I’ve used Rufus (http://rufus.akeo.ie/) on Windows and UNetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) on other Unix-like systems. This approach might work, but it’s certainly not OpenBSD-approved.
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