INSTALLATION NOTES for OpenBSD/i386 6.8 What is OpenBSD? ---------------- OpenBSD is a fully functional, multi-platform UN*X-like Operating System based on Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2) and 4.4BSD-Lite. There are several operating systems in this family, but OpenBSD differentiates itself by putting security and correctness first. The OpenBSD team strives to achieve what is called a "secure by default" status. This means that an OpenBSD user should feel safe that their newly installed machine will not be compromised. This "secure by default" goal is achieved by taking a proactive stance on security. Since security flaws are essentially mistakes in design or implement- ation, the OpenBSD team puts as much importance on finding and fixing existing design flaws and implementation bugs as it does writing new code. This means that an OpenBSD system will not only be more secure, but it will be more stable. The source code for all critical system components has been checked for remote-access, local-access, denial- of-service, data destruction, and information-gathering problems. In addition to bug fixing, OpenBSD has integrated strong cryptography into the base system. A fully functional IPsec implementation is provided as well as support for common protocols such as SSL and SSH. Network filtering and monitoring tools such as packet filtering, NAT, and bridging are also standard, as well as several routing services, such as BGP and OSPF. For high performance demands, support for hardware cryptography has also been added to the base system. Because security is often seen as a tradeoff with usability, OpenBSD provides as many security options as possible to allow the user to enjoy secure computing without feeling burdened by it. Because OpenBSD is from Canada, the export of Cryptography pieces (such as OpenSSH and IPsec) to the world is not restricted. (NOTE: OpenBSD can not be re-exported from the US once it has entered the US. Because of this, take care NOT to get the distribution from a mirror server in the US if you are outside of Canada and the US.) A list of software and ideas developed by the OpenBSD project is available on the web at https://www.OpenBSD.org/innovations.html. A comprehensive list of the improvements brought by the 6.8 release is also available at https://www.OpenBSD.org/68.html. OpenBSD/i386 runs on standard PC computers and clones, based on Intel and compatible 80486 or better processors. Sources of OpenBSD: ------------------- Please refer to https://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html for all the ways you may acquire OpenBSD. OpenBSD 6.8 Release Contents: ----------------------------- The OpenBSD 6.8 release is organized in the following way. In the .../6.8 directory, for each of the architectures having an OpenBSD 6.8 binary distribution, there is a sub-directory. The i386-specific portion of the OpenBSD 6.8 release is found in the "i386" subdirectory of the distribution. That subdirectory is laid out as follows: .../6.8/i386/ INSTALL.i386 Installation notes; this file. SHA256 Output of the cksum(1) program using the option -a sha256, usable for verification of the correctness of downloaded files. SHA256.sig The above file, signed with the OpenBSD signing key for the 6.8 release, usable for verification of the integrity of the above file, and thus of the downloaded files. miniroot68.img A miniroot filesystem image to be used if you for some reason can't or don't want to use the ramdisk installation method. It can be copied to a small USB key to start the install. floppy68.img The standard i386 boot and installation floppy; see below. pxeboot i386-specific second-stage PXE bootstrap (for network installs); see below. *.tgz i386 binary distribution sets; see below. bsd A stock GENERIC i386 kernel which will be installed on your system during the install. bsd.mp A stock GENERIC.MP i386 kernel, with support for multiprocessor machines, which can be used instead of the GENERIC kernel after the install. bsd.rd A compressed RAMDISK kernel; the embedded filesystem contains the installation tools. Used for simple installation from a pre-existing system. install68.iso The i386 boot and installation CD-ROM image, which contains the base and X sets, so that install or upgrade can be done without network connectivity. install68.img A boot and installation image which contains the base and X sets. An install or upgrade can be done with a USB key without network connectivity. cd68.iso A simple bootable filesystem image consisting of the bsd.rd installation kernel, suitable to be used as a bootable CD-ROM image, but will require the base and X sets be found via another media or network. cdbr First-stage CD bootstrap (boot sector), which loads the cdboot second-stage bootstrap. This file is included in the cd68.iso image, and is provided as a convenience, but will rarely be needed. cdboot Second-stage CD bootstrap loader for non-emulation OpenBSD El Torito CD-ROMs. It processes boot.conf then loads the bsd.rd installation ramdisk kernel. This file is included in the cd68.iso image, and is provided as a convenience, but will rarely be needed. Bootable installation/upgrade floppy image: The single floppy image can be copied to a floppy using rawrite.exe, ntrw.exe, or "dd", as described later in this document. The floppy image is a bootable install floppy which can be used both to install and to upgrade OpenBSD to the current version. It is also useful for maintenance and disaster recovery. The OpenBSD/i386 binary distribution sets contain the binaries which comprise the OpenBSD 6.8 release for i386 systems. There are eight binary distribution sets. The binary distribution sets can be found in the "i386" subdirectory of the OpenBSD 6.8 distribution tree, and are as follows: base68 The OpenBSD/i386 6.8 base binary distribution. You MUST install this distribution set. It contains the base OpenBSD utilities that are necessary for the system to run and be minimally functional. It includes shared library support, and excludes everything described below. [ 138.7 MB gzipped, 271.0 MB uncompressed ] comp68 The OpenBSD/i386 Compiler tools. All of the tools relating to C, C++ and Objective-C are supported. This set includes the system include files (/usr/include), the linker, the compiler tool chain, and the various system libraries (except the shared libraries, which are included as part of the base set). This set also includes the manual pages for all of the utilities it contains, as well as the system call and library manual pages. [ 70.1 MB gzipped, 219.0 MB uncompressed ] game68 This set includes the games and their manual pages. [ 2.5 MB gzipped, 6.2 MB uncompressed ] man68 This set includes all of the manual pages for the binaries and other software contained in the base set. Note that it does not include any of the manual pages that are included in the other sets. [ 6.9 MB gzipped, 29.9 MB uncompressed ] xbase68 This set includes the base X distribution. This includes programs, headers and libraries. [ 15.8 MB gzipped, 50.5 MB uncompressed ] xfont68 This set includes all of the X fonts. [ 38.4 MB gzipped, 56.6 MB uncompressed ] xserv68 This set includes all of the X servers. [ 11.2 MB gzipped, 29.2 MB uncompressed ] xshare68 This set includes all text files equivalent between all architectures. [ 4.3 MB gzipped, 28.8 MB uncompressed ] OpenBSD System Requirements and Supported Devices: -------------------------------------------------- OpenBSD/i386 6.8 works across a broad range of standard PCs and clones, with a wide variety of processors and I/O bus architectures. It can be expected to install and run with minimal difficulties on most current products. The cases where problems may be encountered are typically older proprietary PCs, laptops, or specialized server boxes that rely on a custom BIOS to paper over implementation differences. OpenBSD/i386 6.8 supports most SMP (Symmetrical MultiProcessor) systems. To support SMP operation, a separate SMP kernel (bsd.mp) is included with the installation file sets. The minimal configuration to install the system is 32MB of RAM and at least 250MB of disk space to accommodate the `base' set. To install the entire system, at least 600MB of disk are required, and to run X or compile the system, more RAM is recommended. Please refer to the website for a full list of supported hardware: https://www.openbsd.org/i386.html Verifying the OpenBSD Installation Media: ----------------------------------------- As of OpenBSD 5.5, installations are able to verify files for the next release. The OpenBSD 6.8 release was signed with the /etc/signify/openbsd-68-base.pub release key. If you have an existing OpenBSD 5.5 or higher installation, you can run signify(1) to verify the signature and checksum. For example, run the following to verify that the cd68.iso file was distributed by the OpenBSD team: signify -C -p /etc/signify/openbsd-68-base.pub -x SHA256.sig cd68.iso If you are unable to run or compile signify(1), use sha256(1) with the SHA256 file to see if a file was corrupt during the transfer. Getting the OpenBSD System onto Useful Media: --------------------------------------------- Installation is supported from several media types, including: CD-ROM FFS partitions DOS (FAT) partitions EXT2 partitions (NOT supported if booting from floppy) HTTP If you can't (or don't want to) boot off a CD-ROM, you can use a floppy disk (1.44MB required) or a USB key. Failing that, if your computer supports PXE, you can prepare a server to start the install across the network, but you will still need the install sets available on one of the above media types. Creating a bootable CD-ROM: First you need to get access to the OpenBSD bootable CD-ROM (ISO) images. They can be found on one of the OpenBSD mirror servers. Two files are available, install68.iso which contains all of the sets needed for installation, and a smaller cd68.iso which contains just the installer, for a network install. Windows 7 users should be able to do this by right clicking on the install68.iso file and clicking burn to CD. OpenBSD users should be able to do this with the cdio command. "cdio tao install68.iso" Users of other operating systems should consult the appropriate documentation. Creating a bootable floppy disk using Windows: First you need to get access to the OpenBSD bootable floppy images. If you can access the distribution from the CD-ROM under DOS, you will find the bootable disks in the 6.8/i386 directory. Otherwise, you will have to download them from one of the OpenBSD mirror sites, using an FTP client or a web browser. In either case, take care to do "binary" transfers, since these are images files and any DOS cr/lf translations or Control-z EOF interpretations will result in corrupted transfers. You will also need to go to the "tools" directory and grab a copy of the ntrw.exe utility. Run it with the correct arguments like this "ntrw :" Note that, when installing, the boot floppy can be write-protected (i.e. read-only). Creating a bootable floppy disk using a Un*x-like system: First, you will need to obtain a local copy of the bootable filesystem image as described above. You should use the signify(1) and sha256(1) commands to verify the integrity of the images with the SHA256.sig file on the mirror site. Next, use the dd(1) utility to copy the file to the floppy drive. The command would likely be, under OpenBSD: dd if=floppy68.img of=/dev/rfd0c bs=36b If you are using another operating system, you may have to adapt this to conform to local naming conventions for the floppy and options suitable for copying to a "raw" floppy image. The key issue is that the device name used for the floppy *must* be one that refers to the correct block device, not a partition or compatibility mode, and the copy command needs to be compatible with the requirement that writes to a raw device must be in multiples of 512-byte blocks. The variations are endless and beyond the scope of this document. If you're doing this on the system you intend to boot the floppy on, copying the floppy back to a file and doing a compare or checksum is a good way to verify that the floppy is readable and free of read/write errors. Note that, when installing, the boot floppy can be write-protected (i.e. read-only). Creating a bootable USB key using a Un*x-like system: Some older systems may not be able to boot from USB keys or require changing boot priority. Check your BIOS settings if you run into problems. First, you will need to obtain a local copy of the bootable filesystem image miniroot68.img or install68.img as described above. You should use the signify(1) and sha256(1) commands to verify the integrity of the images with the SHA256.sig file on the mirror site. Next, use the dd(1) utility to copy the file to the USB storage device. The command would likely be, under OpenBSD: dd if=miniroot68.img of=/dev/rsdNc bs=1m where N is the device number. You can find the correct device number by checking dmesg(8) when inserting the media. If you are using another operating system, you may have to adapt this to conform to local naming conventions for the USB key and options suitable for copying to a "raw" disk image. The key issue is that the device name used for the USB key *must* be one that refers to the correct block device, not a partition or compatibility mode, and the copy command needs to be compatible with the requirement that writes to a raw device must be in multiples of 512-byte blocks. The variations are endless and beyond the scope of this document. If you're doing this on the system you intend to boot the USB key on, copying the image back to a file and doing a compare or checksum is a good way to verify that the USB key is readable and free of read/write errors. Creating a PXE network bootable setup using OpenBSD or other Unix-like system: In order to start the install via PXE, you will need to set up a DHCP server and a TFTP server. The details of how to do this vary considerably, depending on the network's host. You should refer to the relevant man pages or administrator's guide for the host system. The DHCP server should return "pxeboot" to i386 clients as the network boot program. Both pxeboot and the bsd.rd install kernel should be copied to the TFTP server's root directory. If you are using an OpenBSD server, you can use the supplied dhcpd and tftpd. A sample configuration for dhcpd is given in the pxeboot(8) man page. You can get it from the man68.tgz distribution set, or see the copy on the OpenBSD web page. You should also refer to dhcpd(8) and tftpd(8) for more information on configuring them. The steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets for installation depend on which method of installation you choose. Some methods require a bit of setup first that is explained below. The installation allows installing OpenBSD directly from HTTP mirror sites over the internet, however you must consider the speed and reliability of your internet connection for this option. It may save much time and frustration to download the distribution sets to a local server or disk and perform the installation from there, rather than directly from the internet. If you are upgrading OpenBSD, you also have the option of installing OpenBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing file system, and using them from there. To do that, do the following: Place the distribution sets you wish to upgrade somewhere in your current file system tree. At a bare minimum, you must upgrade the "base" binary distribution, and so must put the "base68" set somewhere in your file system. It is recommended that you upgrade the other sets, as well. Preparing your System for OpenBSD Installation: ----------------------------------------------- First and foremost, before beginning the installation process, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A RELIABLE BACKUP of any data on your hard disk that you wish to keep. Repartitioning your hard disk is an excellent way to destroy important data. The OpenBSD root partition must reside completely within the BIOS supported part of the hard disk -- this could typically be 504MB, 2GB, 8GB or 128GB, depending upon the age of the machine and its BIOS. The rest of the OpenBSD partitions can be anywhere that hardware supports. If you plan to dual boot, use the other operating system's "fdisk" program or partition editor to create at least one of the partitions to be used for that operating system. If that operating system is already set up to use the entire disk, you will need to make space available. Windows 7 can resize its own system partition. In the control panel, search for "partition": this will lead you to the system administration tool. You do not have to create an OpenBSD partition at this time; the OpenBSD installation will give you an opportunity to create the partition needed for OpenBSD. Your hard disk is now prepared to have OpenBSD installed on it, and you should proceed with the installation instructions. Installing the OpenBSD System: ------------------------------ Installing OpenBSD is a relatively simple process. If you take your time and are careful to read the information presented by the installer, you shouldn't have any trouble. There are several ways to install OpenBSD onto a disk. The easiest way, should your computer support it, is to boot off an OpenBSD CD-ROM, USB key, or off one of the bootable CD-ROM mini images. Otherwise, you can boot from a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy disk if your machine has a floppy drive. If your machine supports PXE network boots, you could try to configure a server for a network install. You should now be ready to install OpenBSD. The following is a walk-through of the steps you will take while getting OpenBSD installed on your hard disk. The installation procedure is designed to gather as much information about your system setup as possible at the beginning, so that no human interaction is required as soon as the questions are over. The order of these questions might be quite disconcerting if you are used to other installation procedures, including older OpenBSD versions. If any question has a default answer, it will be displayed in brackets ("[]") after the question. If you wish to stop the installation, you may hit Control-C at any time, but if you do, you'll have to begin the installation process again from scratch. Using Control-Z to suspend the process may be a better option, or at any prompt enter "!" to get a shell, from which "exit" will return you back to that prompt. If you are using CD-ROM, USB key or floppy media, ensure the media is present before starting. Reboot the computer to begin the install. You might have to play with your BIOS options to get the computer to boot from the correct installation media (floppy, CD, USB key or network/PXE) rather than from the hard disk. If you are installing across the network with PXE, you will need to tell pxeboot to get the bsd.rd install kernel: boot> boot bsd.rd It can take a while to load the kernel from a floppy, slow speed CD-ROM drive, or across a network, most likely more than a minute. If some action doesn't eventually happen, or the spinning cursor has stopped and nothing further has happened, either your boot floppy is bad or you are having hardware problems. If trying another floppy disk doesn't help, try booting after disabling your CPU's internal and external caches (if any). If it still doesn't work, OpenBSD probably can't be run on your hardware. This can probably be considered a bug, so you might want to report it. If you do, please include as many details about your system configuration as you can. Once the kernel has loaded, you will be presented with the OpenBSD kernel boot messages which contain information about the hardware that was detected and supported by OpenBSD. After the kernel is done initializing, you will be asked whether you wish to do an "(I)nstall", "(U)pgrade" or an "(A)utoinstall". Enter "I" for a fresh install or "U" to upgrade an existing installation. Enter "A" to start an unattended installation where all of your answers are supplied in a response file (more on that in "Preparing an unattended installation of OpenBSD"). If you are connected with a serial console, you will next be asked for your terminal type. You should choose the terminal type from amongst those listed. (If your terminal type is xterm, just use vt220). If you are connected using a glass console, you will next be asked for your keyboard layout (the default being the US QWERTY layout). Depending on your keyboard type, not all international layouts may be supported; answering "?" (which, on QWERTY layouts, is the key to the left of the right "shift" key, shifted) will display a list of supported layouts. (If you do not need to change the keyboard layout, just press enter.) The first question you will be asked is the system hostname. Reply with the name of the system, without any domain part. You will now be given an opportunity to configure the network. The network configuration you enter (if any) can then be used to do the install from another system using HTTP, and will also be the configuration used by the system after the installation is complete. The install program will give you a list of network interfaces you can configure. For each network interface you select to configure, you will be asked for: - the symbolic host name to use (except for the first interface setup, which will reuse the host name entered at the beginning of the installation). - the IPv4 settings: address and netmask. If the IP address should be obtained from a DHCP server, simply enter "dhcp" when asked for the address. - the IPv6 settings (address, prefix length, and default router). You may enter "autoconf" when asked for the address for the interface to configure automatically via router solicitation messages. After all interfaces have been configured, if there have been any IPv4 interfaces set up, you will be asked for the IPv4 default route. This step is skipped if you only have one IPv4 interface setup, and it is configured with DHCP. The install program will also ask you for your DNS domain name, and the domain name servers, unless this information has already been obtained from a DHCP server during interface setup. You will then be asked to enter the initial root password of the system, twice. Although the install program will only check that the two passwords match, you should make sure to use a strong password. As a minimum, the password should be at least eight characters long and a mixture of both lower and uppercase letters, numbers and punctuation characters. You will then be asked whether you want to start sshd(8) by default. You will next be asked whether you intend to run the X Window System on your machine. The install program needs to know this, to change a configuration setting controlling whether the X server will be able to access the xf86(4) driver; it is not necessary to answer "y" to this question if you only intend to run X client programs on a remote display. If you answered "y" to this question, you will get asked whether you want to start xenodm(1) on boot. If you are installing using a serial console, and since by default, the OpenBSD/i386 installation will only start terminals on the primary display device, the installation program will ask you whether you want to also enable an additional terminal on that line, and will allow you to select the line speed. You will now be given the possibility to set up a user account on the forthcoming system. This user will be added to the "wheel" group. Enter the desired login name, or "n" if you do not want to add a user account at this point. Valid login names are sequences of digits and lowercase letters, and must start with a lowercase letter. If the login name matches this criteria, and doesn't conflict with any of the administrative user accounts (such as "root", "daemon" or "ftp"), you will be prompted for the user's descriptive name, as well as its password, twice. As for the root password earlier, the install program will only check that the two passwords match, but you should make sure to use a strong password here as well. If you have chosen to set up a user account, and you had chosen to start sshd(8) on boot, you will be asked if you want to allow sshd(8) logins as root. Depending on the installation media you are using, you may now be given the opportunity to configure the time zone your system will use. If the installation program skips this question, do not be alarmed: the time zone will be configured at the end of the installation. The installation program will now tell you which disks it can install on, and ask you which it should use. Reply with the name of your root disk. Disks on OpenBSD/i386 are partitioned using either "MBR" or "GPT" partitioning schemes. You will need to create one disk partition in which the OpenBSD filesystems will be created. The installation program will ask you if you want to use the whole disk for OpenBSD. If you don't need to or don't intend to share the disk with other operating systems, answer "w" here to use "MBR" partitioning or "g" to use "GPT" partitioning. The installation program will then create a single partition spanning the whole disk, dedicated to OpenBSD. Otherwise, fdisk(8) will be invoked to let you to edit your partitioning. The current partitions defined will be displayed and you will be allowed to modify them, add new partitions, and change which partition to boot from by default. Note that you should make the OpenBSD partition the active partition at least until the install has been completed. After your OpenBSD partition has been created, dividing the space into filesystems can follow. The file system layout is stored in the OpenBSD disk label. Each file system is stored in its own "disk label partition", which is a subdivision of the OpenBSD disk partition you created. In the text below, "partition" refers to these subdivisions. You will be shown a default layout with the recommended file systems. This default layout is based on the disk size. You will be given the choice of accepting the proposed layout, editing it, or creating your own custom layout. These last two choices will invoke the disklabel(8) interactive editor, allowing you to create your desired layout. Within the editor, you will see at least a "c" partition of fstype "unused". This represents the whole disk and cannot be modified. If you have DOS or Linux partitions defined on the disk, these will usually show up as partition 'i', 'j' and so on. You must create partition "a" as a native OpenBSD partition, i.e. one with "4.2BSD" as the fstype, to hold the root file system. In addition to partition "a" you should create partition "b" with fstype "swap", and native OpenBSD partitions to hold separate file systems such as /usr, /tmp, /var, and /home. You will need to provide a mount point for all partitions you define. Partitions without mount points, or not of the 4.2BSD fstype, will neither be formatted nor mounted during the installation. For quick help while in the interactive editor, enter "?". The "z" command (which deletes all partitions and starts with a clean label), the "A" command (which performs the automatic partition layout) and the "n" command (to change mount points) are of particular interest. Although the partitions' position and size are written in exact sector values, you do not need a calculator to create your partitions! Human-friendly units can be specified by adding "k", "m" or "g" after any numbers to have them converted to kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes. Or you may specify a percentage of the disk size using "%" as the suffix. Enter "M" to view the entire manual page (see the info on the "-E" flag). To exit the editor enter "q". After the layout has been saved, new filesystems will be created on all partitions with mount points. This will DESTROY ALL EXISTING DATA on those partitions. After configuring your root disk, the installer will return to the list of available disks to configure. You can choose the other disks to use with OpenBSD in any order, and will get to set up their layout similarly to the root disk above. However, for non-root disks, you will not be proposed a default partition layout. When all your disks are configured, simply hit return at the disk prompt. After these preparatory steps have been completed, you will be able to extract the distribution sets onto your system. There are several install methods supported: HTTP, CD-ROM, or a local disk partition. To install via HTTP: To begin an HTTP install you will need the following pieces of information: 1) Proxy server URL if you are using a URL-based HTTP proxy (squid, CERN FTP, Apache 1.2 or higher). You need to define a proxy if you are behind a firewall that blocks outgoing HTTP connections (assuming you have a proxy available to use). 2) The IP address (or hostname if you configured DNS servers earlier in the install) of an HTTP server carrying the OpenBSD 6.8 distribution. The installation program will try to fetch a list of such servers; depending on your network settings, this might fail. If the list could be fetched, it will be displayed, and you can choose an entry from the list (the first entries are expected to be the closest mirrors to your location). 3) The directory holding the distribution sets. Then refer to the section named "installation set selection" below. To install from CD-ROM: When installing from a CD-ROM, you will be asked which device holds the distribution sets. This will typically be "cd0". If there is more than one partition on the CD-ROM, you will be asked which partition the distribution is to be loaded from. This is normally partition "a". You will also have to provide the relative path to the directory on the CD-ROM which holds the distribution, for the i386 this is "6.8/i386". Then refer to the section named "installation set selection" below. To install from a local disk partition: When installing from a local disk partition, you will first have to identify which disk holds the distribution sets. This is normally "wdN" or "sdN", where N is a number. Next you will have to identify the partition within that disk that holds the distribution; this is a single letter between "a" and "p". You will also have to identify the type of file system residing in the partition identified. Currently, you can install from partitions that have been formatted as the Berkeley fast file system (ffs) or MS-DOS. You will also have to provide the relative path to the directory on the file system where the distribution sets are located. Note that this path should not be prefixed with a "/". Then refer to the next section. Installation set selection: A list of available distribution sets found on the given location will be listed. You may individually select distribution sets to install by entering their names or wildcards (e.g. "*.tgz" or "base*|comp*"), or you may enter "all" to select all the sets (which is what most users will want to do). You may also enter "abort" to deselect everything and restart the selection from scratch, or unselect sets by entering their name prefixed with "-" (e.g. "-x*"). It is also possible to enter an arbitrary filename and have it treated as a file set. When you are done selecting distribution sets, enter "done". The files will begin to extract. After the files have been extracted, you will be given the choice to select a new location from which to install distribution sets. If there have been errors extracting the sets from the previous location, or if some sets have been missing, this allows you to select a better source. Also, if the installation program complains that the distribution sets you have been using do not match their recorded checksums, you might want to check your installation source (although this can happen between releases, if a snapshot is being updated on a mirror server with newer files while you are installing). The last thing you might need to configure, if you did not get the chance to earlier, is the time zone your system will be using. For this work properly, it is expected that you have installed at least the "base68" and "bsd" distribution sets. The installation program will then proceed to save the system configuration, create all the device nodes needed by the installed system, and will install bootblocks on the root disk. On multiprocessor systems, if the bsd.mp kernel has been installed, it will be renamed to "bsd", which is the default kernel the boot blocks look for. The single processor kernel, "bsd", will be available as "bsd.sp". Finally, you will be asked whether you would like to install non-free firmware files (which can't be tightly integrated to the OpenBSD system) on first boot, by invoking fw_update(8) on the next boot. Congratulations, you have successfully installed OpenBSD 6.8. When you reboot into OpenBSD, you should log in as "root" at the login prompt. You should create yourself an account, if you skipped this step during installation, and protect it and the "root" account with good passwords. The install program leaves root an initial mail message. We recommend you read it, as it contains answers to basic questions you might have about OpenBSD, such as configuring your system, installing packages, getting more information about OpenBSD, sending in your dmesg output and more. To do this, run mail and then just enter "more 1" to get the first message. You quit mail by entering "q". Some of the files in the OpenBSD 6.8 distribution might need to be tailored for your site. We recommend you run: man afterboot which will tell you about a bunch of the files needing to be reviewed. If you are unfamiliar with UN*X-like system administration, it's recommended that you buy a book that discusses it. Preparing an unattended installation of OpenBSD: ------------------------------------------------ If "(A)utoinstall" is chosen at the install prompt or if the installation system detects that it booted from the network, and isn't interrupted within 5 seconds, it attempts a fully-automatic installation. The installer runs dhclient(8) on the network interface the system booted from, or in case of multiple interfaces it will ask which one to use. Upon success, it retrieves a response file via HTTP. If that fails, the installer asks for the response file location, which can be either a URL or a local path, and retrieves the response file from there. The "next-server" DHCP option specifies the hostname part of the URL, as in "http:///install.conf". The "filename" DHCP parameter specifies the installer mode, e.g. "auto_install". On architectures where this parameter is used for netbooting, create a symbolic link named "auto_install" pointing to the boot program. The response file contains lines with key/value pairs separated by an equals sign "=", where the key is a non-ambiguous part (up to the question mark) of the installer question, consisting of whitespace separated words. The value is what would have been entered at the interactive prompt. Empty lines and lines beginning with a "#" character are ignored. The installer uses default answers in case of missing answers. Here is a response file example that uses a hashed password (see encrypt(1) for more details) for root and a public ssh key for the user that is created during the installation. System hostname = openbsd Password for root = $2a$14$Z4xRMg8vDpgYH...GVot3ySoj8yby Setup a user = puffy Password for user = ************* Public ssh key for user = ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1...g3Aqre puffy@ai What timezone are you in = Europe/Stockholm Location of sets = http HTTP Server = ftp.eu.openbsd.org The "System hostname" key above matches the following full question asked during an interactive installation: System hostname? (short form, e.g. 'foo') While the installation is in progress the installer writes all output to the file /ai.log, which is available as mail on the freshly installed system after the initial reboot. If the installation is successful the system will reboot automatically; otherwise, you will be dropped back into the shell where you can look at the /ai.log file or try again. Upgrading a previously-installed OpenBSD System: ------------------------------------------------ Warning! Upgrades to OpenBSD 6.8 are currently only supported from the immediately previous release. The upgrade process will also work with older releases, but might not execute some migration tasks that would be necessary for a proper upgrade. The best solution, whenever possible, is to backup your data and reinstall from scratch. As a minimum, if the toolchain (the "comp" set) was installed, you should remove all files within /usr/include before attempting to upgrade. To upgrade OpenBSD 6.8 from a previous version, start with the general instructions in the section "Installing OpenBSD". Boot from the CD-ROM or an installation floppy as you would do for a new installation. When prompted, select the (U)pgrade option rather than the (I)nstall option at the prompt in the install process. You will be presented with a welcome message, and depending on how you are connected to the system, you will be asked to set the terminal type or to choose a keyboard layout. The upgrade script will ask you for the existing root partition, and will use the existing filesystems defined in /etc/fstab to install the new system in. It will also use your existing network parameters. From then, the upgrade procedure is very close to the installation procedure described earlier in this document. However, it is strongly advised that you unpack the etc.tgz and the xetc.tgz files found in /var/sysmerge in a temporary directory and merge changes by hand, or with the help of the sysmerge(8) helper script, since all components of your system may not function correctly until your files in "/etc" are updated. Getting source code for your OpenBSD System: -------------------------------------------- Now that your OpenBSD system is up and running, you probably want to get access to source code so that you can recompile pieces of the system. You can get the pieces over the internet using anonymous CVS, rsync, FTP or HTTP(s). For more information, see: https://www.OpenBSD.org/anoncvs.html https://www.OpenBSD.org/ftp.html Using online OpenBSD documentation: ----------------------------------- Documentation is available if you first install the manual pages distribution set. Traditionally, the UN*X "man pages" (documentation) are denoted by "name(section)". Some examples of this are intro(1), man(1), apropos(1), passwd(1), passwd(5) and afterboot(8). The section numbers group the topics into several categories, but three are of primary interest: user commands are in section 1, file formats are in section 5, and administrative information is in section 8. The "man" command is used to view the documentation on a topic, and is started by entering "man [section] topic". The brackets [] around the section should not be entered, but rather indicate that the section is optional. If you don't ask for a particular section, the topic with the least-numbered section name will be displayed. For instance, after logging in, enter man passwd to read the documentation for passwd(1). To view the documentation for passwd(5), enter man 5 passwd instead. If you are unsure of what man page you are looking for, enter apropos subject-word where "subject-word" is your topic of interest; a list of possibly related man pages will be displayed. Adding third party software - packages and ports: -------------------------------------------------------- As complete as your OpenBSD system is, you may want to add any of several excellent third party software applications. There are several ways to do this. You can: 1) Use the OpenBSD package collection to grab a pre-compiled and tested version of the application for your hardware. 2) Use the OpenBSD ports collection to automatically get any needed source file, apply any required patches, create the application, and install it for you. 3) Obtain the source code and build the application based upon whatever installation procedures are provided with the application. Instructions for installing applications from the various sources using the different installation methods follow. You should also refer to the packages(7) manual page. Installing applications from the ftp.OpenBSD.org package collection: All available packages for your architecture have been placed on ftp.OpenBSD.org in the directory pub/OpenBSD/6.8/packages/i386/ You may want to peruse this to see what packages are available. The packages are also on the OpenBSD mirror sites. See https://www.OpenBSD.org/ftp.html for a list of current mirror sites. Installation of a package is very easy. 1) become the superuser (root) 2) use the "pkg_add" command to install the software "pkg_add" is smart enough to know how to download the software from the OpenBSD HTTP server. Example: $ su Password: # pkg_add \ http://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.8/packages/i386/emacs-21.4p32.tgz Installing applications from the OpenBSD ports collection: See https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#Ports for current instructions on obtaining and installing OpenBSD ports. You should also refer to the ports(7) manual page. Installing other applications: If an OpenBSD package or port does not exist for an application you're pretty much on your own. The first thing to do is ask if anyone is working on a port -- there may be one in progress. If no such port exists, you might want to look at the FreeBSD ports or NetBSD pkgsrc for inspiration. If you can't find an existing port, try to make your own and feed it back to OpenBSD. That's how our ports collection grows. Some details can be found in the OpenBSD Porter's Handbook at https://www.openbsd.org/faq/ports/ with more help coming from the mailing list, . Administrivia: -------------- There are various mailing lists available via the mailing list server at . To get help on using the mailing list server, send mail to that address with an empty body, and it will reply with instructions. More information about the various OpenBSD mailing list and proper netiquette is available at https://www.OpenBSD.org/mail.html To report bugs, use the "sendbug" command shipped with OpenBSD, and fill in as much information about the problem as you can. Good bug reports include lots of details. Additionally, bug reports can be sent by mail to: bugs@OpenBSD.org As a favor, please avoid mailing huge documents or files to the mailing lists. Instead, put the material you would have sent on a web server, then mail the appropriate list about it, or if you'd rather not do that, mail the list saying you'll send the data to those who want it. For more information about reporting bugs, see https://www.OpenBSD.org/report.html