Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

Existing partition: The 
RAM disk
 kernel can be booted off an already existing partition for an upgrade or 
reinstall. 
●
Network: Some platforms support booting over a network (for example using 
PXE
 or other 
network boot
). 
●
Writing a file system image to disk (miniroot): a filesystem image that can be written to an existing partition, 
and then can be booted. 
●
Bootable Tape: Some platforms support booting from tape. These tapes can be made following the INSTALL.
platform instructions. 
Not every 
platform
supports all boot options: 
●
alpha:
 Floppy, CD-ROM, network, writing a floppy image to hard disk. 
●
amd64:
 Floppy, CD-ROM, 
network
. 
●
armish:
 Varies by machine. 
●
hp300:
 CD-ROM, network. 
●
hppa:
Network. 
●
i386:
 Floppy, CD-ROM, 
network
. 
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html (2 of 43)9/4/2011 10:01:58 AM

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4 - OpenBSD 4.9 Installation Guide
●
landisk:
 miniroot, installed using another computer. 
●
macppc:
 CD-ROM, network. 
●
mvme68k:
 Network, bootable tape. 
●
mvme88k:
 Network, bootable tape. 
●
sparc:
Floppy, CD-ROM, network, writing image to existing swap partition, bootable tape. 
●
sparc64:
 Floppy (U1/U2 only), CD-ROM, network, writing image to existing partition. 
●
vax:
Floppy, network. 
●
zaurus:
 Boot bsd.rd from Linux partition. See 
INSTALL.zaurus
 for details. 
All platforms can also use a 
bsd.rd
to reinstall or upgrade. 
Once the install kernel is booted, you have several options of where to get the 
install file sets
. Again, not every platform 
supports every option. 
●
CD-ROM: Of course, we prefer you use the 
Official CD-ROM set
, but you can also use 
install49.iso
or 
you can also make your own. 
●