I see you've gotten lots of answers about installing from CD, but I
don't bother. I just put the files in a directory with a short path
name I can remember, in an msdos partition on the same machine, and
install from that using the "install from disk" option and a boot
floppy.
It will ask for the drive the files are on, in wd0 or wd1 form, so you
have to know which physical drive it's on. Then it asks for the (dos)
partition, which will usually be I. Next it asks for the file system
type, and choosing "default" here sometimes works better than
specifying msdos. When it asks for the directory where the files are,
specify where you put the files from the i386 directory on the FTP
server. If you've put them in C:\obsd31\i386 you'd specify
obsd31/i386 here.
Only those files need to be installed by the install program. The
other files like src.tar.gz, srcsys.tar.gz, ports.tar.gz etc. that are
outside the i386 directory you can just gunzip and untar where they
belong after the installation's over and you're up and running. There
are some inconsistencies here that can cause a mess if you're not
careful though: the ports.tar.gz will unpack a ports directory with
all the files inside it, and srcsys.tar.gz will unpack a sys
directory, but src.tar.gz should be put into the src directory first
because untarring it spews out a whole bunch of stuff. Ports should
end up as /usr/ports, src should be /usr/src, and then inside that
untar sys to make /usr/src/sys.
If it's going into a machine that doesn't have any msdos partitions I
use the same approach, but I use an old spare hard drive connected
temporarily. You only need about 130 megs for the i386 directory, so
I connect it to one machine to load it, then connect to the machine
I'm installing on. I just finished doing that with 3.1 today.
Alan Corey
On Sun, 09 Jun 2002 01:59:25 +0100, Garry Heaton
>I live in the UK, on a very limited budget as a single parent so I was
>pleased to find a reference to the OpenBSD site where, I was told, I
>could download a secure UNIX for free. I followed the directions on the
>OpenBSD site for FTP downloads and duly copied the contents of 3.1/i386
>to a Windows directory which took about 9 hours on my dial-up
>connection. When it was completed I burned a CD ready to install on a
>new partition and checked the site for installation instructions. Under
>"Installation" I then discovered that I cannot create an 'ISO' image
>though I can 'grab OpenBSD and create a CD'.
>What does this mean? What's the difference? Is the CD I created useless?
>I don't have 31 to buy the CDs, nor do I have the patience to wait for
>delivery from the USA. I appreciate the developers need contributions
>but if the site says it's free then it should mean what it says.
>Regards
>Garry Heaton
by