[rescue] OpenBSD

[Christian J Hedemark]

Joshua Johnston said:
> I got into OpenBSD pretty easily while ignoring the politics.  How? It
> was the only distribution of any operating system I could -find- that
> had easy instructions for a network-based installation using only a
> single floppy.

Yep!  I do this all the time!  Most of the machines I install OpenBSD on are
"rescued" boxes and have slow CD's or no CD's at all.  Usually my
refurbishing process involves adding a 100Mbps ethernet card (where
possible) so the network installs usually exceed the performance of local CD
ROM installs anyway.

The other day I was at a client site demonstrating this to a PFY.  He was
installing Root Hat 7.2 on a newer Compaq Deskpro.  I was installing on an
older Pentium II 233MHz.  He was installing from CD, and I over a DSL
connection from ftp.openbsd.org.

I popped in my floppy, took my time partitioning the disks just right, and
installed.  The PFY next to me took most of the defaults with Root Hat and
figured he'd run rings around me on that hot rod machine.

A few minutes later, my install was done.  I think his was still sorting out
package dependencies.  I smiled at him, popped the floppy back in, and
rebooted.  Went through the same install process again.  Finished.  Root Hat
was still going.  I don't think it had made it to CD #2 yet.  Finally I got
a third installation done on the same machine, while Root Hat still had a
few minutes to go before all of the RPM's were installed.

This is an apples & oranges comparison.  I realize that.  Root Hat was
installing like 1.7GB worth of packages and I had about 15% of that
(probably less).  When he was done, he had everything he needed and much
much more.  I had to spend half a day downloading packages and tuning the
machine to my liking.  But OpenBSD was lean, fast, secure, and only had what
I wanted on it.  To achieve the same configuration on Root Hat would
probably take even more customization to tear it down to my level.

And that ftp installation just plain rocks.  I don't even need to take a
CDROM with me.  Just one floppy.  Gotta love it.