flashboot - Jun 2013 - flashboot on Soekris 4826

I''m trying to work through the procedure for installing Flashboot for
the first time. This Soekris has no removable CF, so I''m using PXEboot
to start the standard 5.2 bsd.rd kernel and then see if I could noodle my way
through it.

I formatted the disk with newfs (specifically, I formatted the "a"
partition on the disk), copied the "boot" program over, then used
installboot. From here, I''m not sure what to do. The overview in Github
mentions a bsd.gz file, but I don''t know where to find that. Also,
there are images on Github, but again, I don''t quite understand which
one is appropriate. There are disk images and kernels. It seems like a whole
image is what''s needed here, but I''m not sure. Finally, I
don''t know the mechanics of importing these images: one possibility is
"dd", but that might overwrite whatever installboot did.

Do you have any advice on how to try out flashboot on this device?

Thanks,

Chuck

Chuck,

It should be possible to PXE boot to a bsd.rd kernel (or maybe directly
to a flashboot kernel?), and then use dd to install a flashboot image to
your flash memory.  Admittedly, I have never tried this. 

You could also roll your own very basic boot environment, and transfer a
flashboot kernel, as you''ve been trying.  More information can be found
at https://github.com/openbsd/flashboot/blob/master/README.md. 
https://github.com/openbsd/flashboot/blob/master/build-diskimage.sh is a
nice encapsulation of what you would need to do with your flash device
to make it work, or to roll your own image.

At this point, the image files and kernels on Github are based on
OpenBSD 5.0, and no longer supported.  There has been some activity to
update Flashboot to version 5.3, but it does not seem to be ready, yet. 
I have reported a couple bugs, and am waiting for a little help to get
them fixed.  Good luck!

-John

Yep, that''s the way to do it. You PXEboot a bsd.rd, drop into the
shell, then use FTP and "dd" to blast the image onto the flash device.
And yeah, reading build-diskimage.sh is very instructive. I had deduced a fair
amount of what needed to be done, but there are several things in there that I
probably wouldn''t have figured out in a reasonable amount of time.

After a couple of days of fooling around with it (with some very generous online
help from another list member), I got it going. I started out with those
pre-built images (the ones you mention that are based on 5.0), then built my own
image by cloning Flashboot from Github, running the scripts and tweaking them
slightly to add some additional stuff. It all works. The images I built are
based on 5.2. I would have tried 5.3, but my build machine is a virtual host and
there was supposedly some difficulty getting 5.3 to work reliably on whatever
virtualization they''re using.

So my initial question about getting the stuff onto the 4826 has been answered,
and now I''m moving on to further customization. One big mystery is how
to build a system that''s "read-write", i.e.. not based
entirely on a ramdisk and a "flash" partiion mounted read-only. But
that''s a new topic entirely.

Eventually, I''ll post a writeup on how I did it, along with some more
general "overview" material that may be useful for the project
documentation.

Chuck


On Jun 15, 2013, at 6:34 AM, John Makosky wrote:
> Chuck,
> 
> It should be possible to PXE boot to a bsd.rd kernel (or maybe directly
> to a flashboot kernel?), and then use dd to install a flashboot image to
> your flash memory.  Admittedly, I have never tried this. 
> 
> You could also roll your own very basic boot environment, and transfer a
> flashboot kernel, as you''ve been trying.  More information can be
found
> at https://github.com/openbsd/flashboot/blob/master/README.md. 
> https://github.com/openbsd/flashboot/blob/master/build-diskimage.sh is a
> nice encapsulation of what you would need to do with your flash device
> to make it work, or to roll your own image.
> 
> At this point, the image files and kernels on Github are based on
> OpenBSD 5.0, and no longer supported.  There has been some activity to
> update Flashboot to version 5.3, but it does not seem to be ready, yet. 
> I have reported a couple bugs, and am waiting for a little help to get
> them fixed.  Good luck!
> 
> -John
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> flashboot mailing list
> flashboot@mindrot.org
> https://lists.mindrot.org/mailman/listinfo/flashboot