flashdist

It is designed to install a minimal version of OpenBSD with all of its advanced networking features. The flashdist installation is mounted read-only during normal operation, eliminating the need for frequent writes. This greatly reduces the potential for both boot failure due to a dirty filesystem and for flash corruption from repeated writes. The default distribution list, GENERIC kernel and the default flashdist rc fit within 32MB of RAM and 32MB of flash. This can be scaled down with adjustments. Flashdist will leave a large amount of free space on larger storage mediums which can be used for 3rd party software, data sets, or long term log rotation from the device itself. Feedback is welcome.

Attention: Multi-use disk images generated with flashdist/flashimgbld versions prior to 2008/05/04 included private keys in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key, /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key, and /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key. All disk images were distributed with auto-generated private host keys. Thus, if you installed from a multi-use image, it is strongly recommended that you delete private keys on those installations and reboot. Upon reboot, the startup script /etc/rc will automatically generate new host keys and sshd will start with the new keys. You may also re-install with a fresh image. Host keys were removed from all flashimg builds on this web site so you may continue to use the same version that you have previously tested.

• Frequently Asked Questions about flashdist
• Old versions of flashdist
• Disk images (latest 2008/07/12) generated by flashdist (these are fully ready binary images)
• flashdist-20080504.tar.gz (for OpenBSD 4.3) - I appreciate feedback and bug reports
  • 2008/05/04 is a maintenance release
  • Add a flag to flashdist which disables SSH private key generation.
  • Use this flag in flashimgbld (which generates bulk images for this web site.)
  • In /etc/rc, move SSH key generation ahead of NSH execution, as the current version of NSH will start the SSH daemon on command
  • In /etc/nshrc, activate sshd by default (nshrc only gets used if nsh is installed, otherwise /etc/rc starts sshd directly)
  • Remove ALTQ_NOPCC and TIMER_FREQ from NET45xx config (as OpenBSD has used a reliable timecounter for some time now)
  • Uncomment INET6 in GEODE and NET45xx configs
  • The following notes are from the 2008/04/13 release
  • /etc/rc is fixed so /dev/log is created again (this was broke in the /dev mfs move as of flashdist 2007/11/05 - you can fix this in your flashdist install by changing one line in /etc/rc, just rename the syslog socket from /var/run/log to /dev/log)
  • Installs 'rw' and 'ro' scripts which activate or deactivate file system writeability with a 2 letter command.
  • Past versions of growimg.sh wrote only to a new vnd image. The script now supports the use of any attached disk as a target. It writes direct to flash during file-by-file transfer. Thus, growimg now runs as fast as flashdist itself. (An expanded flash image has lots of blank space that the kernel fills in with zeros when requested by dd. It's a big waste of time to sit around, waiting for a large flash disk to accept this.)
  • The following notes are from the 2008/02/28 release
  • Flashdist now installs necessary tools for future system upgrades, including ftp (for ftp/http get capability) and various shell tools
  • Installed systems now get marked with a version number for upgrade reference
  • Manual pages are now compressed to meet the 32MB flash target
  • growimg.sh no longer relies on growfs (now it works in virtually any situation, it'll even shrink an image)
  • The following notes are from the 2008/02/07 release
  • Significant script cleanup from Rev. Shamim Mohamed, D.D., LFHCfS <shamim@languid.org>
  • Rev. Shamim gives us command line flags for encrypted password, syslog server, and geometry which make flashdist driveable via Makefile (the way he likes it)
  • Includes snmpd
  • The following notes are from the 2007/12/14 release
  • Kernel configs updated for OpenBSD-current
  • Comes with an example bulk image builder script (the one that builds the disk images for this web site)
  • OK prompts can now be bypassed for automated usage
  • Distribution lists can now be of virtually unlimited size
  • Includes vmstat and relayd (instead of hoststated)
  • Includes newsyslog and cron to rotate logs so they don't continually fill up the MFS (installs a sensible config as well) (or just use syslogc)
  • Optionally specify command line args through environment variables, or hard-code them
  • Optionally specify DNS and NTP servers through environment variables, or hard-code them
  • Optionally specify C/H/S through environment variables, or hard-code them
  • The script will now auto-calculate bytes/sector, sectors/cylinder, and total sectors in any mode, when not specified (type-in C/H/S mode already did this, and -d mode requires no values at all)
  • Tests for permissions problems on the distribution source before installation, so you don't end up with a broken install that has bad perissions
  • The following notes are from the 2007/11/05 release
  • Includes fix for MBR corruption on vnd images
  • Fix the problem created by library auto-detection (it broke the ability to install from an OpenBSD snapshot if you didn't use the same library versions locally)
  • It now maintains utmp, lastlog, and wtmp (although they are not preserved between reboots)
  • It now includes manual pages for the utilities copied by flashdist
  • It includes inetd (for tftp-proxy), tftpd, last, w, who, whereis and systat
  • /dev fully moved to MFS so that ttyname() will succeed and login() (used by sshd) will write to utmp (ttyname() checks if the tty device is a true character device and that fails if it is a symlink)
• Installation instruction [English] [Français] for flashdist to a Soekris net4501. Of course, you can adapt this to your own equipment.
  • Thanks to Alexandre Anriot <aanriot@atlantilde.com> for the French translation, c'est magnifique!
• nsh: command line interface for OpenBSD routers

  flashdist-YYYYMMDD.tar.gz contains the following:

  • flashdist.sh: Read-only mode flash installer. Installs the following configuration files and as specified in the distribution list.
  • flashimgbld.sh: Example bulk image builder (builds the disk images on this web site)
  • growimg.sh: Example disk image resize (shrink, expand) tool
  • flashsmall.txt: A small distribution list which lists approx. 32MB of files that make up core OpenBSD components for networking and diagnostics
  • etc/rc: Filesystem/network startup which assumes you do not want to mount the flash read-write, and will configure the network, or run nsh. It will mount /dev and /var read-write on memory file systems and populate them for you.
  • etc/nshrc: something to get you started with nsh
  • etc/fstab: an fstab for a read-only mount
  • etc/ttys: modified from stock to start getty on tty00 port at 19200
  • etc/syslog.conf: a version that is easy for flashdist.sh to modify
  • etc/boot.conf: redirects console over com0(tty00) port at 19200
  • etc/inetd.conf: minimal inetd.conf for tftp-proxy and tftpd
  • etc/newsyslog.conf: minimal newsyslog.conf for MFS log rotation
  • etc/tabs/root: root crontab to run newsyslog
  • NET45xx Kernel config for Elan SC520 [Soekris net45xx], includes cardbus
  • GEODE Kernel config for Geode SC1100 [PCengines WRAP] [Soekris net4801] and Geode LX [PCengines ALIX] [Soekris net5501] systems
  • NOTES boot.conf notes and ALIX/WRAP specific information

• How to use a USB-CF adapter with OpenBSD
• What USB-CF adapters work with OpenBSD
• Alternatives to Flashdist