JSP Web Hosting Blog

Making a Boot Floppy If you do not have an OpenBSD CD-ROM, or if your hardware does not boot from CD-ROM, you need to start your install with a boot floppy. The OpenBSD boot floppy actually contains a very small subset of OpenBSD, including just the tools needed to recognize your hardware, format your disks, and download and extract the appropriate distribution sets in the correct locations. You’ll find a few boot floppy images in the architecture release directory. The purpose of these images may change over time, so confirm in the release install document if you have any trouble. Each name includes the release number for example, the images for OpenBSD 3.4 will be named floppy34.fs, floppy34B.fs, and floppy34C.fs. Download the disk image that most closely describes your system; you only need one. . floppyXX.fs This image is for the most common i386 hardware. This will boot your average workstation or low-end server. . floppyXXB.fs This image is for high-end servers. It includes gigabit Ethernet cards, SCSI, and RAID drivers. . floppyXXC.fs This image is for laptops and other PCMCIA/Cardbus systems. Once you have the appropriate image file, you’ll need to copy it onto a floppy disk. You cannot use basic file system-level copying, such as Windows drag and drop. These are image files, meaning that they include the file system and not just the files on the file system. Creating Floppies on UNIX If you’re already running a UNIX-like system, dd(1) is the only command you need. You also need to know your floppy drive’s device name, which is probably /dev/fd0, /dev/floppy, or /dev/rfd0. Once you have that, you just tell dd(1) to copy the image to the disk in that device. If the device name was /dev/fd0c, you’d enter dd if=floppy33B.fs of=/dev/fd0c to write the floppy33B.fs image to floppy disk. If dd(1) runs for a while and then gives an error, you may have a bad floppy disk. Floppies tend to go bad very easily, and you should try another one. If dd gives you an error immediately or exits silently without writing to the floppy disk, you probably need to specify a different floppy device driver. Creating Floppies on Windows 9x If you’re running a Microsoft Windows 9x-based operating system, such as Windows Me, Windows 98, or Windows 95, you’ll need a program to copy the disk images. Microsoft doesn’t provide one, but OpenBSD does, which you’ll find in the “tools” directory of the release directory. The program fdimage.exe is specifically designed for these older Microsoft operating systems and does not work on Windows NT-based operating systems. Fdimage.exe is a free program that can copy disk images and is quite easy to use. For example, to copy the floppy image floppy33.fs to the floppy in your a: drive, enter the following at a DOS prompt: C:> fdimage floppy33.fs a: The floppy will churn for a while, and finally spit out an OpenBSD boot floppy. Windows 9x has restrictions on filenames; each filename is restricted to eight characters, with a three-character extension after a period. While the GUI desk-top displays long filenames, these are actually aliases for the names available in DOS mode. The names of floppyXXB.fs and floppyXXC.fs are nine characters long, with a two-character extension. This means that Windows will rename these files to something its innards can accept, retaining these names as aliases visible in the GUI. At a DOS prompt, however, you’ll need to find out what DOS calls your floppy image before you can boot it. The file floppy33B.fs may well be called something like floppy~1.fs. Page 57
Note: If you are looking for best quality webspace to host and run your tomcat application check Vision tomcat hosting services

Again, if you have trouble, your floppy is probably bad. Creating Boot Floppies on Modern Microsoft Systems If your computer is running Windows NT or one of its descendants (such as Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, and so on), fdimage.exe will not work. OpenBSD includes a program for this, ntrw.exe, in the tools directory of the release directory. Like fdimage.exe, ntrw.exe is designed to copy a disk image to a disk. Windows NT-based systems do not rewrite filenames, so you should be able to open a command prompt and just type: C:> ntrw floppy33C.fs a: If it doesn’t work, you probably have a bad floppy disk. Page 58
Note: If you are looking for best quality webspace to host and run your tomcat application check Vision tomcat hosting services

Hardware Setup Before you even begin, be sure OpenBSD supports your hardware! You can find the supported hardware list for the most recent version of OpenBSD on i386 at http://www.OpenBSD.org/i386.html, or on the FTP site or CD-ROM in the release directory as i386/INSTALL.i386. These documents include lists of hardware that is supported at this time. The devices on the hardware compatibility lists are frequently identified by chipset, not by the vendor. After all, when you buy a computer the network card is frequently just listed as a “10/100 Ethernet,” not an “Intel i8255x-based PCI Ethernet card.” To make matters worse, many vendors use identical hardware under a separate brand name or use different hardware under the same brand name. For example, Linksys is famous for having four very different cards all called the EtherLink. You might have to dig in the hardware manual for this information, or ask your vendor. If nothing else, you can just try to install and see if everything works. The boot-time messages will give you a great deal of information on what sort of hardware you have. BIOS Setup Before you try to install, confirm that your system’s BIOS is properly configured. Because every BIOS is slightly different, I won’t go over exact instructions on how to configure. Most computer systems tell you how to access the system BIOS when you first boot the computer and include a simple menu-driven system to make changes. Consult your motherboard manual if you have any problems. First, set “Plug and Play OS” to NO. This tells your BIOS to do some basic hardware setup, rather than relying upon the OS to do everything. Modern versions of Microsoft Windows expect to handle hardware setup. OpenBSD takes advantage of the BIOS’ ability to configure the hardware itself. Many PCI devices will work poorly if you do not set this option! Also configure your boot device. If you are installing from CD-ROM, set your boot device to CD-ROM, then floppy disk, then hard drive. (If your CD-ROM boot gives you trouble, you can use a floppy disk as a fallback.) If you are installing from some other media, your first boot device should be the floppy disk and the hard disk second. Page 56

Hint: If you are looking for high quality and reliable webspace provider to host and run your jsp hosting application check Virtualwebstudio jsp web hosting provider

Chapter 3: Dedicated Installation Overview Bootable floppy, CD-ROM or FTP, hard drive comes to life Armed with your OpenBSD software and a computer with supported hardware, you are now ready to face an actual installation. We will cover a full installation on the i386 architecture via CD-ROM and FTP/HTTP. (We’ll cover installing from a hard disk in Chapter 4, as you won’t be using that method unless you’re using multiple operating systems.) You may or may not need to use a floppy disk to boot your system, so be sure you have one handy just in case. If OpenBSD is one of several operating systems you plan to install on this machine, you still need to read this chapter. While the next chapter covers the issues involved with sharing a hard drive between OpenBSD and several other operating systems, it does not discuss actually installing OpenBSD! You’ll want to understand OpenBSD’s standalone installation process before beginning to install on a multiboot system. Before you install, be absolutely certain that any data you have on this machine is backed up elsewhere! When you install OpenBSD and use the entire hard drive, as we’re doing in this chapter, you will reformat the hard disk; you’ll lose any data on the hard drive. The first thing you need to do is check your hardware and prepare your BIOS. Page 55

Hint: If you are looking for high quality and reliable webspace provider to host and run your jsp hosting application check Virtualwebstudio jsp web hosting provider

Decisions Complete! You now know where to get OpenBSD and which method you will use to install it. You should know which distribution sets you want to install on your first machine and how you want to divide your hard disk. These are the most difficult issues you will face in installing OpenBSD. Hopefully, you have a piece of paper with your decisions noted; if so, the only real thinking you will have to make during the installation is which key to press to get your desired result. We’re going to cover that in the next chapter . Page 54
Note: If you are looking for cheap and inexpensive provider to host and run your tomcat application check Actions tomcat hosting services

Disk Sectors You need to be aware of disk sectors to use the installation tool. We’ll discuss sectors in more detail in Chapter 18, but for now you just need to be aware that a sector is a tiny section of a disk. Each sector has a number. Sector 0 is at the beginning of the disk, and the sectors are numbered sequentially until the end of the disk. Partitions can be defined by the sectors that they occupy. On most disks, the Master Boot Record takes up the first 62 sectors. The next partition would start at sector 63 and go on for a size you indicate. Page 53
Note: If you are looking for cheap and inexpensive provider to host and run your tomcat application check Actions tomcat hosting services

Multiple OS Partitioning Many people need to run multiple operating systems on one computer, and OpenBSD allows you to do that. By far, the easiest way to do this is to install a hard drive in your computer for each operating system. This allows you to use each OS’s native disk tools without risking tramping on your other operating system. In this day of dirt-cheap hundred-gig hard drives, however, this is an added complication for many people who simply want to divide up their hard disk appropriately. When you divide up a single hard disk between multiple operating systems, you fall into another level of partitioning, known as MBR (Master Boot Record) partitions. The boundaries of these partitions are stored in the Master Boot Record on a disk, and are managed by tools such as UNIX fdisk(8), DOS fdisk, or Microsoft’s Disk Administrator. Any operating system can see MBR partitions; they may not recognize that one of these partitions is designated for OpenBSD, but they realize that this is a discrete section of disk. Within these large partitions, you create smaller OpenBSD-specific partitions for /home, /usr, and so on. The fdisk tools allow you to, say, take your 80GB disk and designate the first 20GB for OpenBSD, the second 20GB for Microsoft Windows XP, the third 20GB for FreeBSD, and the last chunk for Linux, should you wish. You then use each OS’s native tools to manage those chunks of disk space. You would then use a separate “boot manager” to choose between operating systems at boot time. When you decide where to put disk space for any one OS, you need to allow for OpenBSD’s boot limitations. Just because you have multiple operating systems on a hard drive doesn’t mean that you can ignore the 504MB limit or the 8GB limit. If you have enough disk space to install more than one operating system, chances are your system does not suffer from the 504MB limit. Still, the OpenBSD root partition must be contained entirely within the first 8GB of disk, not the first 8GB of disk space assigned to OpenBSD. In most cases, this means that OpenBSD must be the first operating system on your disk. Also, OpenBSD on a hard disk must be a single contiguous section; you cannot dedicate the first 20GB of your hard drive to OpenBSD, have a 20GB Microsoft partition, and have a 40GB OpenBSD partition to round out your disk. Put your OpenBSD partition first on the disk, and you won’t have any problems. We discuss multiboot partitioning and installation at length in Chapter 4. Page 52

Hint: If you are looking for very good and affordable webspace to host and run your tomcat hosting application check Virtualwebstudio tomcat web hosting provider

rhe ad. Multiple Hard Drives If you have a second hard drive of comparable quality to your main drive, you can make excellent use of it with proper planning. First, use the outer edge of the drive for swap, as discussed earlier in the “Swap Splitting” section. Use the rest of the drive to segregate your data from your operating system. Do this by assigning the remainder of the drive to the partition that stores files for whatever your server does the most of. If it’s a Web server, make the second drive /www or /home. If it’s a mail server, use it for /var or /var/mail. If it’s a network logging host, assign the second drive to /var/log. In general, segregating your operating system from the data you’re serving increases system efficiency. Like all rules of thumb, this is debatable. But no sysadmin will tell you that this is an actively bad idea, while one can argue endlessly about what the “absolute best” idea is. If you have no idea what your system will be for, make your second drive /usr and split your first hard drive amongst /var, /tmp, /, and swap space. If your second drive is much slower than your main system drive, don’t bother using it. Not only will its performance be poor, chances are that it is much older than your main drive and far more likely to fail. If you need to install more than one operating system on your computer, an extra hard drive is an excellent and easy way to do that. Page 51

Hint: If you are looking for very good and affordable webspace to host and run your tomcat hosting application check Virtualwebstudio tomcat web hosting provider

s tha n 30 0M B. Jus t for kic ks, co mp are tha t to the am ou nt of sp ac e a mi ni ma l ins tall of Wi nd ow s XP req uir es or the siz e of an mi ni ma l Sol ari s 9 bo x ins tall ati on. Yo ur Page 49

Hint: If you are looking for very good and affordable webspace to host and run your java hosting application check Virtualwebstudio java web hosting provider

co mp let e ins tall , wit h all yo ur us er pro gra ms , ma y be far lar ger tha n 30 0M B but all tha t sp ac e is us ed up be ca us e of thi ng s yo u sp ecif ical ly wa nt, not OS ove Page 50

Hint: If you are looking for very good and affordable webspace to host and run your java hosting application check Virtualwebstudio java web hosting provider