The Howto (and Howto-Not) Corner

I had an old OpenBSD 3.4 box lying around, but as it had only a 150 MB hard disk, it was quite useless. I needed to build a firewall and as Debian woody fits nicely in that space, I migrated the box to Debian.

My setup:
wd0 - a 150 MB disk
wd0a - the 150 MB OpenBSD partition

Here's how:

1. get the linux kernel and Debian setup initial ramdisk images:
   $ mkdir /lin; cd /lin
   $ wget ftp://ftp.ee.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current/{bf2.4/linux.bin,images-1.44/bf2.4/root.bin}
   
2. install grub into the boot block of the hard disk (THIS WILL DESTROY THE OPENBSD BOOTLOADER AND MAY RENDER YOUR DISK UNBOOTABLE):
   cd /tmp
   wget ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-stable/All/grub-*
   tar jxf grub-*
   mv share/grub/i386-freebsd/ /grub
   dd if=/grub/stage1 of=/dev/wd0 bs=512 count=1
   dd if=/grub/stage2 of=/dev/wd0 bs=512 skip=1
3. reboot, you will land into the grub shell,
   grub> root (hd0,1,a)
   grub> kernel /lin/linux.bin
   grub> initrd /lin/root.bin
   grub> boot
4. Debian setup will start

Leave me comments and remember -- use the instructions at your own risk.