LiveUSB with OpenBSD - Bootable OpenBSD flashdrive for your keyring
What is LiveUSB-OpenBSD?
It is trivial to a create a bootable USB stick with OpenBSD. I wanted to create one and realized that this will be of general use for anyone who likes a UNIX USB memory stick that they can carry with them on a keychain.
You can now purchase a preloaded LiveUSB flashdrive from
for just 49.95$
If you wish to have LiveCD/LiveDVD instead, please refer to our other LiveCD-OpenBSD project on sourceforge!
Reasons for preferring LiveCD to LiveUSB
- It is much easier that way. Boot up the LiveCD after burning an ISO and you can install to a hard drive or USB stick regardless of size
- You don't have to know UNIX
- The installer has a nice progress bar unlike the plain dd(1) method I describe below
- The LiveCD is not as pretty as LiveUSB but it is an intermediate step to obtain LiveUSB
You now have the option of downloading our VMWare appliance and directly run it on Windows with the free VMWare player!
Our sites are featured in Dragonfly Digest.
This USB image shall not touch your hard disk in any way. All the operations are done in the USB stick and main memory. Nothing will be written to your MBR or boot loaders!
Obviously the USB image to install OpenBSD 5.3 in your machine will install to your hard disk! Also remember that these images ignore the size of the USB medium(disk space above 8GB is ignored).
- USB Install version for around 500MB which is a USB installer for OpenBSD instead of a CD/DVD medium
- Minimal version for 8 GB without X
- Full version for 8 GB with X
- Gnome version for 8 GB
Please make your choice, download and enjoy!
Quick Download links
- Download USB Install disk image
- Download Minimal 8GB image
- Download Full 8GB image
- Download Gnome 8GB image
- Download VMWare appliance
How to create your own LiveUSB with OpenBSD?
Really easy. Watch out. Everything is done with qemu by Fabrice Bellard. Just install that package and blindly follow the instructions below.
# qemu-img create liveusb-full.img 1000000
# qemu-system-i386 -hda liveusb-full.img -cdrom install53.iso
That is it! You are ready to dd(1) now. See below.
Creating a LiveCD is more work because you need a read only OS. No such issue with writeable USB memory sticks.
USB-OpenBSD-Installer for ~ 130 MB
This is an OpenBSD 5.3 install CD/DVD image on a USB stick. You can install OpenBSD 5.3 from a USB memory stick instead of an optical medium like CD/DVD. Have fun!
Remember to follow this process to install the sets from the USB stick. It is little different from installing from optical media. Only the relevant interactions are here. Follow your instinct and use your common sense.
Let's install the sets!
Location of sets? (cd disk ftp http or 'done') [cd] disk
Is the partition already mounted? [no]
Available disks are: sd0 wd0.
Which one contains the install media? (or 'done') [sd0]
Pathname to the sets? (or 'done') [5.3/i386]
LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Minimal for 8GB
This is the version for minimalists. It still is way too powerful! There is ONE package for uncompressing the installer p7zip. You can install whichever package you need. OpenBSD base install comes with a fully functional DNS server, HTTP server, web browser, command line download with ftp(1) for HTTP and FTP with resume support and so on...
You can login as user live and password live123 The root password is openbsd1729.
LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Minimal 8GB(7zipped ~130 MB)
This is the non Xwindow version for geeks. Though there is no X, it still is way too powerful! Here are the installed packages. You still have pure-ftpd, lftp, curl, mutt, postfix, vim, lua, python, and a whole lot of other stuff!
The packages in LiveUSB-Minimal are
aget-0.4.1 multi threaded HTTP download accelerator axel-2.4 tiny download accelerator bing-1.0.5p3 point-to-point bandwidth measurement tool btpd-0.16 BitTorrent Protocol Daemon curl-7.26.0p1 get files from FTP, Gopher, HTTP or HTTPS servers fping-2.4b2p6 quickly ping N hosts w/o flooding the network hping-2.0.0rc3p1 TCP/UDP ping/traceroute tool lftp-4.3.3 shell-like command line ftp and sftp client luasocket-2.0.2p2 network support for the lua language mpg123-1.14.4p0 fast console MPEG audio player and decoder library mpg321-0.3.2 free clone of mpg123, a command-line mp3 player mutt-1.5.21p0v0-sasl-sidebar-compressed tty-based e-mail client, development version normalize-0.7.7p0 audio file volume normalizer p5-Curses-UI-0.9609 curses based user interface framework for Perl p5-CursesWidgets-1.997p3 curses(3) based terminal widgets p5-Proc-Daemon-0.14 run perl program as a daemon process p7zip-9.20.1p0 file archiver with high compression ratio postfix-2.10.20130201-sasl2 fast, secure sendmail replacement pure-ftpd-1.0.36-virtual_chroot small, easy to set up, fast and very secure FTP server quirks-1.80 exceptions to pkg_add rules randtype-1.13 output characters or lines at random intervals rtorrent-0.8.9p0v0 ncurses BitTorrent client based on libTorrent sing-1.1p4 send ICMP nasty garbage socat-1.7.2.1 relay for bidirectional data transfer sox-14.4.1 Sound eXchange, the Swiss Army knife of audio manipulation vim-7.3.154p2-no_x11 vi clone, many additional features vorbis-tools-1.4.0p0 play, encode, and manage Ogg Vorbis files wget-1.14 retrieve files from the web via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP
You can login as user live and password live123 The root password is openbsd1729.
Download USB image of LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Minimal 7z image from here.
LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Full 8 GB (7zipped ~270 MB)
I have installed only the most important packages that I required. This does not have firefox browser. I do not need it. If you wish to create your own liveUSB, you can do that of course. You could get in touch with me if you need custom packages.
For now you can make do with this one. This throws up a nice xdm prompt where you can login as user live and password live123. The root password is openbsd1729. The password is three words with two spaces in between.
You only need 8GB for this. The packages installed are:
ImageMagick-6.7.7.7p2 image processing tools colorls-5.0 ls that can use color to display file attributes curl-7.26.0p1 get files from FTP, Gopher, HTTP or HTTPS servers ffmpeg-20121026p2 audio/video converter and streamer figlet-2.2.5 generates ASCII banner art firefox-18.0.2p0 Mozilla web browser lftp-4.3.3 shell-like command line ftp and sftp client mplayer-20120725 movie player supporting many formats mutt-1.5.21p0v0-sasl-sidebar-compressed tty-based e-mail client, development version osd_clock-0.5p2 xosd based clock p5-Curses-UI-0.9609 curses based user interface framework for Perl p5-CursesWidgets-1.997p3 curses(3) based terminal widgets p5-Proc-Daemon-0.14 run perl program as a daemon process p7zip-9.20.1p0 file archiver with high compression ratio pidgin-2.10.6p2-gtkspell multi-protocol instant messaging client postfix-2.10.20130201-sasl2 fast, secure sendmail replacement qemu-1.3.1p0 multi system emulator quirks-1.80 exceptions to pkg_add rules root-tail-1.2p1 tails a given file anywhere on your X11 root window transcode-1.1.7p3 video stream processing tools vim-7.3.154p2-gtk2 vi clone, many additional features wget-1.14 retrieve files from the web via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP windowmaker-0.92.0p13 window manager that emulates NEXTSTEP(tm) wmcalclock-1.25p0 wm-dockapp; calendar/clock wmdate-0.7p2 wm-dockapp; shows the current date wmmoonclock-1.27p4 wm-dockapp; shows the moon phase wmtictactoe-1.1.1p1 wm-dockapp; TicTacToe game wmtimer-2.92p4 wm-dockapp; alarm clock wmweather-2.4.3p3 wm-dockapp; weather monitor xosd-2.2.14 displays text on your screen
You can listen to streaming audio or watch videos with mplayer. You have a nice minimal graphical environment with windowmaker. You can read man pages in color. There are several nice things you can do with this minimal OS. Just download the image and try it out.
Download USB image of LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Full 7z image from here.
LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Gnome 8GB (7zipped ~490 MB)
The packages in the Gnome variant are
ImageMagick-6.7.7.7p1 image processing tools colorls-5.0 ls that can use color to display file attributes curl-7.26.0 get files from FTP, Gopher, HTTP or HTTPS servers ffmpeg-20120610 audio/video converter and streamer figlet-2.2.5 generates ASCII banner art firefox-13.0.1 Mozilla web browser gnome-3.4.2p7 GNOME desktop meta-package (base installation) gnome-extra-3.4.2p2 GNOME desktop meta-package (full installation) gnome-games-3.4.2p0 collection of games for the GNOME desktop gnome-session-3.4.2.1p1 GNOME session lftp-4.3.3 shell-like command line ftp and sftp client libreoffice-3.5.5.3v0 multi-platform productivity suite mplayer-20110309p19 movie player supporting many formats mutt-1.5.21p0v0-sasl-sidebar-compressed tty-based e-mail client, development version osd_clock-0.5p2 xosd based clock p5-Curses-UI-0.9609 curses based user interface framework for Perl p5-CursesWidgets-1.997p3 curses(3) based terminal widgets p5-Proc-Daemon-0.03p1 run perl program as a daemon process p7zip-9.20.1p0 file archiver with high compression ratio pidgin-2.10.6-gtkspell multi-protocol instant messaging client postfix-2.10.20120630-sasl2 fast, secure sendmail replacement qemu-1.1.0p0 multi system emulator quirks-1.73 exceptions to pkg_add rules root-tail-1.2p1 tails a given file anywhere on your X11 root window transcode-1.1.7p0 video stream processing tools vim-7.3.154p2-gtk2 vi clone, many additional features wget-1.13.4 retrieve files from the web via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP windowmaker-0.92.0p11 window manager that emulates NEXTSTEP(tm) wmcalclock-1.25 wm-dockapp; calendar/clock wmdate-0.7p1 wm-dockapp; shows the current date wmmoonclock-1.27p3 wm-dockapp; shows the moon phase wmtictactoe-1.1.1p0 wm-dockapp; TicTacToe game wmtimer-2.92p2 wm-dockapp; alarm clock wmweather-2.4.3p2 wm-dockapp; weather monitor xosd-2.2.14 displays text on your screen
You can login as user live and password live123 The root password is openbsd1729.
With this version you can browse the Internet with Mozilla Firefox, chat using pidgin, download youtube videos with yt or youtube-dl and it has several networking tools like nmap, hping, socat and sing thrown in. The repertoire is really interesting.
Download USB image of LiveUSB-OpenBSD-Gnome 7z image from here.
These LiveUSB images are based on 5.3 release of OpenBSD made on May 1,2013.
In all the 3 variants you can always add and remove packages with the pkg_add(1) and pkg_delete(1) commands in case my choices do not agree with yours.
Once you download the 7z image, install p7zip and unzip the USB image.
Install 7zip if not already present.
# pkg_add p7zip
Unzip the downloaded image with this command.
$ 7z e liveusb-full.img.7z
Then verify the SHA1 checksums from the table below.
| OpenBSD LiveUSB image | Unzipped image size | SHA1 Checksum for USB images |
|---|---|---|
| install53.img | 2147483648 Bytes | 9cd1fff640260655b9c8594588abe9d44449b3cc |
| liveusb-mini.img | 8000000000 Bytes | e3cd50d101b920ecda36da221761e3c30f9f1ba5 |
| liveusb-full.img | 8000000000 Bytes | 1291145f39199ae0581c60b3eb5b38812e934c22 |
| liveusb-gnome.img | 8000000000 Bytes | 24c9a8c9ed452a09d1dca9da03b8a522e084a86d |
Other LiveUSB projects
Installing LiveUSB to a USB stick on UNIX/Linux
You can burn this image to a USB stick with this command on OpenBSD
# dd if=liveusb-full.img of=/dev/rsd0c bs=256k
Please be aware that your USB stick could be sd0 .. sdn depending upon in what order you insert into your computer.
You can burn this image to a USB stick with this command on Linux.
# dd if=liveusb-full.img of=/dev/sdb bs=512k
Please check with dmesg and find out whether your stick is identified as sdb or sdc or whatever else.
Once you write the image you can test the USB stick without rebooting the computer with this qemu command on OpenBSD.
# qemu-system-i386 -usb -hda /dev/rsd0c
Once you find that things work fine you can reboot. You can do something similar on Linux and Windows too.
If you are too lazy to burn it into a USB stick you could run this off a qemu emulator.
# qemu-system-i386 -hda liveusb-full.img
(If you want full networking you boot with)
# qemu-system-i386 -net nic -net tap -hda usb-full.img
Booting resumes from this point and throws up an xdm screen.
If you wish to have LiveCD/LiveDVD instead, please refer to our other LiveCD-OpenBSD project on sourceforge!
In fact the easiest way to use LiveUSB is by burning the ISO of the sister project LiveCD-OpenBSD and use the LiveUSB that it creates.
Installing LiveUSB to a USB stick on Windows OS
Should you not have access to any UNIX or Linux system you could always use this project to try out OpenBSD by burning to a USB stick from Windows using the free VMWare Player. It is a free download available for those who register on the VMWare website. You also require an ISO image of the LiveCD-OpenBSD project(see above).
Being a GUI tool I am not in a position to detail the process as a bulleted list. However I will guide you briefly and add screenshots when I get time.In case you are curious you could always drop me a mail and I shall respond(mail ID given at bottom of the page).
The idea is to connect to the USB subsystem when you create a new VM and use the downloaded LiveCD-OpenBSD ISO to boot and create a VM which is basically a hard disk image to install the ISO to.
But we instead install to the USB stick. When you create a VM in the final screen you can click at Options and add a USB controller. Then you go to the top menu and Connect to the USB stick in question.
As part of the booting process you will see that OpenBSD actually recognizes the USB stick as yet another hard disk and this happens by disconnecting the stick in the Windows host and connecting it to the OpenBSD guest(this happens automatically).
Now when you run the installer from the CD inside VMWare, you can choose the USB stick instead of the VMWare's hard disk file store as the installer shows the size of the disk to install to. This is bit tricky as my installer does not report the name of the disk. But you should not have much trouble with it. I suggest you always use a VMWare disk image as being very small(since you never use it anyway) like 1G or something and the USB stick you use will be either 4 or 8 Gigabytes. So you can always identify which disk is which from the size reported by the installer. You choose by pressing SPACE bar and then you type TAB followed by ENTER.
Here are screenshots to explain how to install LiveUSB from a Windows machine to a USB stick. If you are familiar with VMWare Player you can go the usual way till the final "Customize Hardware" button and then you have to add the USB controller. Then you can choose to install to USB stick after the CD boots.
For specialized applications there are LiveUSB projects and also their sister LiveCD projects for easier creation of LiveUSB . Some people also would want to use the LiveCD directly without ever going in for USB though that would be of limited use.
If you are on Windows and do not wish to use VMWare Player you can use Win32 disk imager from the Ubuntu project.
All updates are tweeted to 
https://twitter.com/LiveUSBOpenBSD.
Please e-mail girish@gayatri-hitech.com for anything. This stick and its variants are available for sale on Amazon for just 49.95$.
You can now purchase a preloaded LiveUSB flashdrive from
for just 49.95$
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