So I’ve gotten this really *sweet* OEM firewall appliance on demo….
And I thought I’d put OpenBSD-3.7-STABLE onto it.
No hard drive or VGA port, just a com0, 256mb CompactFlash and 512mb of RAM…
Hmmm….
Serial console time….
yup. i guess i got the cable. ;P
So… I have my serial cable, plugged into the DB9 on the demo unit, and also to com0 on my laptop.
no dice. (or console redirection….) #$$%#@^@!!@#%$#!@

## Screw-driver time ##
Ok. I’ve gotten the cover off of this thing, and installed the not-supplied-but-overnight-shipped VGA cable.
(what are they, like $.59 in bulk? )
Monitor plugged in, CDROM drive perched precariously over the open system, USB keyboard plugged in, READY.
Into the BIOS, re-direct the console to com0, save and exit.
## End Screw-driver time ## (for now)

So, just to get an idea of what we’re working with, I installed a simple 3.7-STABLE system.
The 256mb compact flash was recognized as wd0, and so I installed to it as if it were a hard disk.
{swap} 32m
/ {remainder} ~209mb

I installed the following packages:
bsd
base37.tgz
etc37.tgz
misc37.tgz
comp37.tgz (just ’cause I wanted to see if it would fit)

It all fit with ~9mb left over. {cool} Obviously not very useful, as a noisy log would fill the disk rather quickly.
So, let’s build a bootable RAMDISK_CD and boot it from the flash.

We need a similar 3.7-STABLE x86-based build host, preferrably with plenty of drive space, for making the bootable RAMDISK_CD.

Think I’ll go set that up… (more later)