OpenBSD/amd64
OpenBSD/amd64 runs on AMD's Athlon-64 family of processors in 64-bit mode.
It also runs on processors made by other manufacturers which have cloned
the AMD64 extensions. (Some Intel processors lack support for important
PAE NX bit, which means those machines will run without any W^X support --
it is thus safer to run those machines in i386 mode).
Note that OpenBSD/i386 also runs on these
processors, but in 32-bit mode.
X Window System support is available for most graphics cards, using
the X.Org server. As with other free operating systems it is highly recommended
that Nvidia cards are avoided since this vendor continues to show tremendous
resistance towards releasing information that would allow X.Org to support their
hardware properly.
Current status:
The only major shortcoming at this time is that the kernel debugger
ddb
is somewhat poor.
Supported hardware:
Processors
All versions of the AMD Athlon 64 processors and their clones are
supported.
SMP support
Starting with OpenBSD 3.6, OpenBSD/amd64 supports most SMP
(Symmetrical MultiProcessor) systems.
To support SMP operation, a separate SMP kernel (bsd.mp) is
included with the installation file sets.
Unsupported Hardware:
New hardware is constantly being released, some of which may lack support.
Your donation of time, hardware, or documentation
can accelerate this support!
Getting and installing OpenBSD/amd64:
The latest supported OpenBSD/amd64 release is
OpenBSD 5.8.
Here are the
OpenBSD/amd64 5.8 installation instructions
.
Snapshots are made available from time to time, in
this location
as well as in a few
mirrors.
Here are the
OpenBSD/amd64 snapshot installation instructions
as well.
There are several installation media provided:
- CD boot
The CD provides an El Torito no-emulation boot image
that includes almost all OpenBSD drivers.
This also includes minimal USB support (storage devices and keyboard).
For the latest list of drivers available on this image, take a look at the
RAMDISK_CD
kernel configuration file.
- Disk Image (miniroot58.fs)
The same installer as the CD, but in a form suitable for creating bootable
hard drives or USB flash drives.
- Floppy A (floppy58.fs)
This 1.44MB floppy image contains the most common drivers.
It is designed to cover the most typical PC. As a general rule, you will
find that the missing drivers are ones which need large microcodes to run,
such as for rare SCSI cards, gigabit ethernet cards, or RAID devices.
For the latest list of drivers available on this image, take a look at the
RAMDISK
kernel configuration file.