flashrd

flashrd creates OpenBSD images tailored for embedded hardware devices and for executing from a virtualized environment.

flashrd installs a complete OpenBSD system with "one-touch" upgrade capability. It boots from a ramdisk to make in-place upgrades easy and complete. flashrd partitions default to read-only operation, to minimize flash wear.

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• Frequently Asked Questions (and then some)
• Installation instruction [English] [Italiano] and image installation instruction [English] [Italiano]
• GitHub source repository, wiki, issue tracker
• Mailing list for flashrd (List archive)
• Disk images (latest OpenBSD 5.3 release 2013/03/18) generated by flashrd (these are fully ready binary images)
• flashrd-1.3.tar.gz (for OpenBSD 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3)
  • 1.3 release notes
  • Easier "in-place" upgrades to new images, using onetime.tgz. Now just add one line to your rc.conf.local, rc.local and/or rc.shutdown files that get unpacked from onetime.tgz. No hand-merging of any flashrd bootstrap or shutdown code during upgrade.
  • Consolidation of vardirs/tardirs variables and better explanation (built-in to rc.flashrd.sub) of what goes where.
  • 1.2 release notes
  • From Fred C <fred@bsdhost.net>
    • Quite a bit of ksh script cleanup in several areas, see github history and diffs for full details
    • Real option handling improves previous hack-job, allows options out-of-order in flashrd and cfgflashrd
    • Ability to use TMPDIR base so temp files can be put somewhere other than /tmp
    • Move onetime.tgz to its own /etc/rc script, so that onetime.tgz can update /etc/rc.conf.local itself
  • A fix and cfgflashrd additions by Paul Suh <paul.suh@ps-enable.com>
  • Keep output for last run command in a file that can be viewed, instead of sending to /dev/null
  • Clean up flashrd script output some
  • If TMPDIR defined, make a directory for all tmp files within TMPDIR
  • Let /etc auto-size instead of using a minimum 50MB
  • to use this on OpenBSD/amd64 (5.0 - 5.3), you must apply a simple patch to /usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/include/pmap.h before running flashrd (or use a pre-built disk image)
  • Release notes for older versions of flashrd
• flashrd-1.3.tar.gz package contents description
• nsh: command line interface for OpenBSD routers