Ouellette on Miscellany: February 2014

28 Feb 2014

Creating A Flexible OpenBSD USB Installer

PREAMBLE

Chris Cappuccio recently submitted to Undeadly his recipe for creating a bootable USB flash disk OpenBSD installer for the amd64 and i386 architectures. More accurately, he gave instructions for creating a bootable disk image using the install.iso file as a base. While there is utility in this, I prefer my particular method for creating a USB installer, and so I am sharing the process in this article.

My method for preparing a USB installer involves creating a small, bootable OpenBSD FFS partition large enough to hold several RAM disk kernels (bsd.rd files). The remainder of the USB disk is allocated to the ~~lowest common denominator~~ universal FAT32 format, which optionally houses the OpenBSD installation sets.

Short Bio

I am a Métis person born and raised in the Métis Nation Homeland, in what is now generally known as the Province of Saskatchewan, Canada.

In 2001, I married Camelot Lam Kwai Yu, at the time a visiting student from Hong Kong. She has since become a Canadian citizen and now goes by Cammy Yu Ouellette. We have lived in Vancouver since 2014. Before that, we lived together in Saskatoon. We also lived for a few years in Regina.

I am a lawyer called to the bar in British Columbia in 2015. My alma mater is the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan. Prior to attending law school, I was employed in information technology for over 15 years, ending that career as the Director of IT for the Métis Nation - Saskatchewan (August 2010).

This blog is my sporadic outlet for wide-ranging interests, including computer technology, STEM, the common law, and politics. And food and drink. Cammy has developed me into a bit of a foodie.

Ideas coming off the top of my head can be found on Twitter (@BreenOuellette).

I recognize that I live within territories stolen from the Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, and it is incumbent on the Crown to make fair and just reparations for the state's land theft, its ongoing illegal profits originating from that theft, and its crimes against humanity committed in the pursuit of those profits.