On 08/07/11 07:30, Michael Treibton wrote: > hi, > > On 7 August 2011 12:19, Francois Pussault <[email protected]> wrote: >> hi, all, >> >> This should be an hardware issue, I've used an usb external drive with >> success. whith a dell A6 or A7 version of Dell bios, boot usb enabled, with >> a (double-usb) eternal drive, using BSD4.2 filesystem. >> >> so maybe you need a bios upgrade or a double-usb-drive to be able to boot or >> to use BSD4.2 fs on / ? > > i'd agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that NetBSD has been on > this drive at some point, and has booted from it just fine, > unfortunately only OpenBSD seems to suffer being able to work off this > drive. > > I'm wondering if it's down to how the other BSDs partition the disk? > it's entirely possible other OSes gave a small partition for /boot > which the bios could pick up on? that being the case, is that easy to > do at install time? i'll have to read the docs i suppose, assuming > its even a good idea. > > But bios upgrade? No, i really can't see how that's correct given > evidence to the contrary. > > Thanks, > > Michael
It really boils down to either: 1) your BIOS is brain damaged and can't boot OpenBSD from an external HD. Your "evidence" in no way convinces me that's not true. I've seen machines that claimed to be able to boot from a USB device (Dell D610 laptop), but couldn't from an OpenBSD flash drive that booted Just Fine on a much lower priced machine from a manufacturer with a very poor reputation for quality and support (Acer Aspire One). BIOS update didn't help in my case. 2) Something went wrong with your install process. All kinds of options there -- no MBR code loaded, PBR didn't install properly, etc. No promises that "both" isn't the answer. This works, I've been installing OpenBSD on USB drives and flash devices for a long time. There's a flash drive sitting on my keyboard right now, 2G total, 1.5G OpenBSD, 0.5G FAT. Won't work on the above mentioned Dell D610, but works on almost everything else. Look at this: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#Boot386 there's all kinds of info about what happens and how the boot process works. If you don't get the "Using drive 0, partition 3." message, your MBR is screwed up. If you don't get the "Loading" message, the PBR is screwed up. In either case, the BIOS could be at fault (MBR can't say "hi" if it isn't being loaded and run). Nick.
