OpenBSD Installation On Dedicated Hosting

OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system. It is one of the freely available operating systems offered by Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. The core focus of OpenBSD dedicated server is on security essentials which distinguishes it from others. The important factor for OpenBSD dedicated server is to proactively search for security holes. Researchers comb through the system files one at a time in search of possible weaknesses in the code. The main website for OpenBSD clearly states the goal for this distro is proactive security and integrated cryptography, which are both important for OpenBSD dedicated servers.

The oldest most popular BSD- based operating systems are still active today with Free BSD being the additional one. The features mainly the security features which are not available or present in other operating systems are included specifically in OpenBSD dedicated server and has a tradition of developers auditing the source code for software bugs and security problems. The project maintains strict policies on licensing and prefers the open source BSD licence and its variants—in the past this has led to a comprehensive licence audit and moves to remove or replace code under licences found less acceptable.

The steps to install OpenBSD on dedicated server is simple and easy to follow which will be explained further. Following is the process of installing OpenBSD on a dedicated server . In this we assume that you are already connected to the console shell and rebooted the server. When the boot prompt comes up, type ‘openbsd’ to start OpenBSD’s network boot loader, then ’/bsd.rd’ to start the installation.

boot: openbsd
>> OpenBSD/i386 PXEBOOT 2.03
boot> /bsd.rd
booting tftp:/bsd.rd: 5197108+918896 [52+205088+189820]=0x635ae8
entry point at 0x200120

Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
        The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1995-2009 OpenBSD. All rights reserved.  http://www.OpenBSD.org

OpenBSD 4.5 (RAMDISK_CD) #1112: Sat Feb 28 15:06:26 MST 2009
    [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/RAMDISK_CD
cpu0: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3200+ ("AuthenticAMD" 686-class, 128KB L2 cache) 1.81 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SSE3,CX16
real mem  = 1056468992 (1007MB)
avail mem = 1014886400 (967MB)
mainbus0 at root
 ... etc.
 root on rd0a swap on rd0b dump on rd0b
erase ^?, werase ^W, kill ^U, intr ^C, status ^T
(I)nstall, (U)pgrade or (S)hell?

Lastly you can press I to start the installation after reaching the above point. In this way your OpenBSD is installed on the dedicated server host.