# 002-install

_Tues Sept 21, 2021_

I'm a huge fan of OpenBSD. The simplicity of the system, the cohesive
feel it has, the proactive stance on security... when we decided we'd
set up a tilde, I knew I wanted it to be on OpenBSD.

The only problem? My preferred registrar (Linode) doesn't support it!

Fortunately there's a comprehensive post on the Linode forum of how to
do it [here](https://www.linode.com/community/questions/10329/openbsd-on-linode).

It took us ~45m, the longest OpenBSD install I've had since I first
flashed it on an old thinkpad. 40m of that was waiting for the node to
boot and reboot, etc (we kept messing up the configuration).

1. Create a New Linode (any OS will do)
2. Once booted, shut it down
3. Under the "Storage" tab delete the ext4 partitions
4. Create two new disks, both "Raw" format:
   1. One labeled "install", 1GB (could do less)
   2. One labeled "os", the rest of the space
5. Boot in "Rescue" mode
6. In the serial console, wget the minirootXX.img
   1. Check the sha256 against the SHA256 file
   2. Check the signature using signify (on a different machine that
      has signify)
7. Find the install disk with `lsblk`
8. Flash the img using: `dd if=minirootXX.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M`
9. In the Configurations tab, create a new one:
   1. Full Virtualization
   2. Select a Kernel > Direct Disk
   3. /dev/sda - os
   4. /dev/sdb - install
   5. boot from sdb
10. Reboot into configuration, install OpenBSD from serial console
11. Halt/shutdown, and change configuration to boot from sda
12. Rejoice!

In our case, our main problem was that we skipped the "Direct Disk"
kernel step so we were booting a Linux kernel and trying to load the
img... it panic'd every time! Took us a few boots to figure that out :)