Create an OpenBSD BOOT CD

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Written by Daniel

The OpenBSD team does not supply its users with BOOT-ABLE CD Images, this kind of images are official releases that are commercial. This guide is related to those of you that can not buy the official CD but have a decent Internet connection. You will have to download the OpenBSD packages and create your own OpenBSD BOOT CD. This guide is written for version 4.0 of OpenBSD.

Lets start by creating a directory for storing the repository / packages.

user@host:~/soft/openbsd$ mkdir iso

We now enter the ISO directory and create the following directories.

user@host:~/soft/openbsd$ cd iso
user@host:~/soft/openbsd/iso$ mkdir -p 4.0/i386
user@host:~/soft/openbsd/iso$ mkdir -p packages/i386/

After creating this directories and the tree structure we need to download all the repository / packages from the official ftp locate here : http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html .

We are using ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/ and downloaded the files for the i386 architecture. Thus we need the following structure in our main directory :

# minimal install
bsd
base40.tgz
etc40.tgz
# compilers
comp40.tgz
#MAN help files etc
man40.tgz
misc40.tgz
# the minimum for running XFree86
xbase40.tgz
xfont40.tgz
xserv40.tgz
xshare40.tgz

Depending on your needs we can also download the following archives :

# ports
ports.tar.gz
# systems source
src.tar.gz
# BSD kernel source files, for eventual recompilation
sys.tar.gz

Next we are downloading all the required files from ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.0/i386/ in packages/i386 or any other location.

Next we need to download the ISO file that we are going to use on our BOOT CD ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.0/i386/cdrom40.fs .

Now that we have all the files we need we can build our ISO using the mkisofs command from the cdrecord package.

This are the commands you need to run :

user@host:~/soft/openbsd$ mkisofs -v -r -V "OpenBSD 4.0" -b cdrom40.fs -c boot.catalog -o OpenBSD-i386-4.0.iso iso/

-v -verbose, when in the process of creating the ISO more information will be printed
mkisofs 2.0.3 (i686-pc-linux-gnu)
Scanning iso/
Scanning iso/4.0
Scanning iso/4.0/i386
Excluded by match: iso/boot.catalog
Scanning iso/packages
Scanning iso/packages/i386

-V : Specifies the ISO name that will be written in the MASTER BLOCK on the ISO.

-b : Specifies the path and the boot image file used in creating the CD
-c : The place where the boot.catalog will be placed
-o : Specifies the full ISO NAME

Once the ISO is created you can burn the CD using CDRECORD or any other available soft :

user@host:~/soft/openbsd$ cdrecord -dev=0,1,0 -speed=16 -v OpenBSD-i386-4.0.iso

One can determine all the parameters using the -dev command for CDRECORD -scanbus .

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