Since Yaifo hadn’t been updated since version 0.2 for OpenBSD 3.8, I emailed Waldemar (the original author) and asked if I could take over the project. He said yes, so I am now the official Yaifo maintainer.

I would like to come up with a different name that more expresses that Yaifo is not a different installer, but an enhanced version of bsd.rd (with sshd). I’d also like to come up with a logo. After I get a new name and logo, I’m going to set up a SourceForge project.

If you have name and logo suggestions, leave a comment (or send me an email).

Announcing YAIFO 0.4!

So you don’t think I’ve created/modified/blasphemed the OpenBSD installer, this is basically bsd.rd with sshd+raidframe sprinkled in. Say you’re 500 miles from your colo’d server and need to upgrade it. Build your yaifo.rd kernel. Scp it to colodserver:/bsd. Reboot colo’d server. Ssh to colo’d server and you’re prompted with “(I)nstall, (U)pgrade or (S)hell”.

I’ve emailed the original author asking permission to take over the project and I haven’t received a response. In the mean time, I’ve updated YAIFO (Yet Another Installer For OpenBSD to my version 0.4. I called my previous set of patches “0.3″ though only called it that internally.
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Following up on a previous post about YAIFO (Yet Another Installer For OpenBSD), the Yaifo site seems to still be down.

I had previously patched the Yaifo distribution to update it for OpenBSD 4.0. But, I only patched the i386 part of the tree (and its RAMDISK_YAIFO file). Since I needed Yaifo today to upgrade a Sparc64 box, I took the time to bring the RAMDISK_YAIFO kernel files for sparc, sparc64 and alpha up to 4.0 too.

You can download my new OpenBSD 4.0 Yaifo 0.2 patch file or the patched tarball. You can still download my copy of the original Yaifo 0.2 distribution.

Let me know if you have any problems (or successes).

As I’ve stated in previous posts, I use YAIFO (Yet Another Installer for OpenBSD) to do remote upgrades of my OpenBSD boxes. By remote, sometimes I mean the server sitting in the other room. :)

It seems that development of YAIFO has stopped (and the site is inaccessible). I had previously made a few patches to improve usability (for me) and to make it work with 3.9 and 4.0. But, it started getting complicated with too many patches. So I combined all of the patches into single OpenBSD-version specific files (meaning one for 3.9 and one for 4.0).

If you’ve found this page via Google and are just looking for the unmodified YAIFO code, you’re welcome to download it from my server.

However, I’ve made several useful modifications and some necessary fixes to make YAIFO work with versions of OpenBSD after 3.8 (that are available as patch files):
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It seems that the old YaifO site is down. You can download the latest (as of the last time I checked) from from my site.

Additionally, I’ve applied some patches to it that fix some of the problems I had with it (including not working under 3.8 and 4.0). Other fixes include the ability to compile the yaifo kernel ramdisk with your ssh_host_keys so you don’t have to muck with your ~/.ssh/known_hosts when upgrading. And my favorite patch: use ${SUDO} where ever needed (if defined) so you don’t have to run “make” as root.

See my other posts explaining YaifO and how I’ve used it.
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