INSTALLBOOT(8)      OpenBSD System Manager's Manual (i386)      INSTALLBOOT(8)

NAME
     installboot - installs a bootstrap on an FFS disk or partition

SYNOPSIS
     installboot [-nv] boot biosboot disk

DESCRIPTION
     installboot is used to install a ``first-stage'' boot program into the
     boot area of an FFS disk partition.  It inserts the block number and off-
     set of the inode of the second-stage boot program boot(8) so that the
     biosboot(8) program can load it.  Various filesystem parameters are also
     patched into the boot block.

     The options are as follows:

     -n        Do not actually write anything on the disk.

     -v        Be verbose, printing out the data that are stored in biosboot
               along with lots of other information.

     The arguments are:

     boot      The name of the second-stage boot program in the mounted file
               system where the first-stage boot program is to be installed.
               This should be a full pathname.

     biosboot  The name of the prototype file for the first stage boot pro-
               gram, usually /usr/mdec/biosboot.

     disk      The name of the disk containing the partition in which the sec-
               ond-stage boot program resides and the first-stage boot program
               is to be installed.  This can either be specified in short form
               (e.g., `sd0' or `wd0'), or as the explicit device node, such as
               /dev/rsd0c or /dev/rwd0c.

               The `c' partition is always used to represent the ``entire''
               disk on i386.

EXAMPLES
     The typical use is

           # cp /usr/mdec/boot /boot
           # /usr/mdec/installboot -n -v /boot /usr/mdec/biosboot sd0

     And if the information supplied looks right, run the above without the -n
     flag.  If you are upgrading an old system, you may need to perform some
     additional steps first.  For example:

           boot the floppy.fs filesystem floppy
           # fsck /dev/rsd0a
           # mount /dev/sd0a /mnt
           # cp /usr/mdec/boot /mnt/boot
           # /usr/mdec/installboot -v /mnt/boot /usr/mdec/biosboot sd0

SEE ALSO
     biosboot(8), boot(8), disklabel(8), fdisk(8), init(8)

CAVEATS
     The disklabel d_type field must be set to a value other than ``unknown''.

     /boot must be on the drive/partition specified by disk; you cannot per-
     form cross-device installboots.

OpenBSD 4.7                      March 6, 2010                               1
