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Date: Thu Jan 01 2004 - 18:20:41 CST

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I am trying to boot OpenBSD 3.4 off a USB 2.0 memory stick (flash memory), as opposed to a floppy. Basically, the procedure of dd if=floppy34.fs of=/dev/fd0c and booting the floppy, but using a USB 2.0 memory stick instead.

I have an identical problem to that outlined below:

1. http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2003-07/1785.html

2. http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2003-07/1789.html

I tried

boot: machine disk

at the boot prompt with the SCSI USB 2.0 Memory Key plugged in, and no SCSI hard disk got recognised. I read the following

3. http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2003-02/0607.html

Booted a floppy having floppyB34.fs (3.4 current), still got the same result, no SCSI detected. I have the following

$ /usr/bin/uname -amnpsrv
OpenBSD localhost.my.domain 3.4 GENERIC#18 i386 Intel Pentium M ("GenuineIntel" 686-class)

I'm not sure if the SCSI driver for a USB 2.0 Memory stick / key is available in 3.4. I cannot get the bios geometry for the device. Details of my USB 2.0 device read as follows:

# fdisk sd0
fdisk: sysctl(machdep.bios.diskinfo): Device not configured
Disk: sd0 geometry: 244/64/32 [499712 Sectors]
Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting Ending LBA Info:
 #: id C H S - C H S [ start: size ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 0: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
*1: A6 0 1 32 - 243 10 31 [ 63: 497952 ] OpenBSD
 2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
 3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused

Note: Starting S=32, so LBA start=63. I beleive installboot makes use of the first 63 sectors.

# disklabel -d sd0
# using MBR partition 1: type A6 off 63 (0x3f) size 497952 (0x79920)
# /dev/rsd0c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: Memory Key
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 32
tracks/cylinder: 64
sectors/cylinder: 2048
cylinders: 244
total sectors: 499712
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0 # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0 # microseconds
drivedata: 0

16 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
  a: 497952 63 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0*- 243*)
  c: 499712 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 243)

At the boot with the USB device, I get

Using Drive: 0 Partition: 1

But it seems it cannot read boot. I have boot and bsd from 3.4 on the USB device, having done the following

fdisk -i sd0 (used the details, applied to partition 1, start at 32 not 1)
mount /dev/sd0a /mnt/mem_key
cp /usr/mdec/boot /mnt/mem_key/
cp /bsd /mnt/mem_key/
/usr/mdec/installboot -v -s 32 -h 64 /mnt/mem_key/boot /usr/mdec/biosboot sd0

Ed.

> On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 18:24:00 +0000 (GMT)

>
> > Is it possible to install OpenBSD off a USB memory stick / key.
> >
> > By issuing the either of the following commands
> >
> > dd if=cdrom34.fs of=/dev/rsd0c
> >
> > or
> >
> > dd if=floppyC34.fs of=/dev/rsd0c
> >
> > I copied the floppyC34.fs image to a floppy and the boot works.
> > I copied the floppyC34.fs image to a memory stick and the boot fails.
>
> This doesn't surprise me, because the geometry of these two devices
> is likely to be quite different. The geometry matters because the
> first-stage boot-loader needs to be installed with tables showing it
> where to find /boot, and that depends on the geometry of the device. So
> after copying the image over you need to mount the stick's / partition
> and run installboot. See the installboot(8) man page.

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