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Fix a non-booting OpenBSD snapshot

I started using OpenBSD-current as my daily driver. Today the snapshot was borked, leading to non-booting systems. It was immediately fixed for amd64, but not for systems using FDE. Unfortunately the memo arrived too late here. After my system would hang on boot, I found the message on the ML's archive.

As I have an old HDD in this machine, the device name will start with wd. If using a modern SSD, it will start with sd. sysctl hw.disknames will tell. Just make sure to identify the boot usb and skip it.

Here is how I fixed it. From the before mentioned email I got the link where to find the minirootXX.img: 

https://ftp.hostserver.de/archive/2025-11-14-0105/snapshots/amd64/
Later we will need to split that URL in the host part (https://ftp.hostserver.de) and the path (/archive/2025-11-14-0105/snapshots/amd64) when being prompted for the location of the sets.

  1. Download the last known working minirootXX.img, dd it to a USB thumb drive and boot it.
  2. Get a (S)hell
  3. # cd /dev
  4. # sh MAKEDEV wd0 wd1
  5. # bioctl -c C -l wd0a softraid0
  6. Enter passphrase
  7. # exit
  8. Pick (U)pgrade
  9. Specify sd1 as target
  10. Change location of sets to the URL where you got the working minirootXX.img from

This all was done with the help of user rueda in #openbsd on Libera.chat. Thanks for this!

Update 2025-12-17:
It's a good idea to get the date of the current snapshot before performing a sysupgrade -s by: 

% dmesg | grep '^OpenBSD.*GENERIC'
OpenBSD 7.8-current (GENERIC.MP) #90: Thu Nov 13 11:02:20 MST 2025
Note that the archive link above is off by around 12 hours, but it gives a clue.

Last modified: 2025-12-17T11:24:37Z