Today, part 2: OpenBSD stories — OpenBSD/zaurus: pocket-sized BSD http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/zaurus2.html ping: https://framapiaf.org/@miodvallat@hostux.social/116565518174130734

That’s an interesting idea, though I’m not sure if it’s relevant. The question I’m asking myself is: why is it problematic to use the expire option, which is designed for this very purpose? because sysadmins forget to configure it, which causes the relevant tables to grow?! I think this is more relevant: The "feature request" wish I have is to be able to backup/restore tables preserving the counters and timestamp for each entry. Currently I do a "pfctl -T show" and save to file on server shutdown. Then I do a "pfctl -T add" from filename to reload table on boot. Obviously this resets all the timestamps to the current boot time. I know, don't reboot. seen on: - https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260513064948 This seems me a good idea: save with good informations when rebooting is needed, as instance a "new" rebuilded kernel

… surprised to realize that there was no default terminal; you have to install one … On FreeBSD, x11/plasma6-plasma-desktop is comparable. The Plasma desktop environment installs without Konsole, without System Settings, and so on: [image: 1778618199160-ede9ff95-bbee-4c01-a8d1-878d58a8749d-image.jpeg]

Every single software product is dealing with the question about what to do with “AI”-generated code, but the question is particularly difficult to answer for open source operating systems like Linux distributions and the various BSDs, which often consist of a wide variety of software packages from hundreds to thousands of different developers. On top of that, they also have to ask the “AI” question for every layer of their offering, from the base install, to the official repositories, to community-run ones… https://www.osnews.com/story/144935/openbsd-and-slopcode-raindrop-to-a-torrent/ ping: https://framapiaf.org/@osnews@mstdn.social/116558432820118949

Florian Obser (florian@) recently gave a BSD-NL talk entitled "Let's find out how to get predictable IPv6 addresses assigned to OpenBSD VMs". Florian takes us on a guided tour of how inet6 autoconf actually works, with enlightening and entertaining peeks into selected piece of OpenBSD source. At the end, we are asked to "now, draw the rest of the owl". https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260512115225 slides: https://www.openbsd.org/events.html#bsdnl2026 video: https://exquisite.tube/w/38gDYhMNTNZimk3GcFnHNa

"A balloon ! Mum, I want this balloonnnn…"

In this case, the repo maintainer was kind enough to tell you what AI was used in each file. Look at the file names. Most of them are DallE.

A guide on deploying a lightweight, C-based ActivityPub instance using snac2 on an OpenBSD stack. https://geekyschmidt.com/post/2026-05-05-snac2openbsd/

About this: https://framapiaf.org/@claudiom@bsd.network/116499285750477711

I got into IT right around the liberation of the SunOS source code. I unfortunately never had a chance to play with SPARC systems but if I find an affordable system I'd play with Illumos or OpenBSD on it. I spent some time reviewing the SPARC ISA (which was based).

Hello OpenBSD-ers (also posted on misc@), A friend of mine was installing OpenBSD for the first time, and came upon a minor roadblock. Em didn't realize that you should really install all system software sets unless you're looking for a whole world of issues any sane person may not want to deal with. Part of me wanted to say to my friend: "Read the FaQ and get stuffed!", I didn't cos that wasn't the best idea to say to a new user. I understand if devs and any contributor feel(s) like my initial reaction, but would it hurt to add a 1/2-line warning?: ... [[LIST OF SETS]] You probably want to install all sets if you're new. See https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#FilesNeeded for more information. Location of sets? [cd0 disk http nfs or 'done'] default I am flexible where this comment can be added, there's a couple places that seem alright for different reasons. It might be a good idea to add this just so people are better informed about the system in a place where they might footgun themselves. Linking to the FaQ header could go a long way to teach the behavior of reading docs, if not already set in stone before coming to OpenBSD. Thoughts? I'm considering writing a diff if more end users than myself are interested.

https://codeberg.org/Izder456/dotfiles/src/branch/main/.local/bin/fastestmirror wrote this Perl script to find the fastest mirror for you via scraping ftp.html for the mirror list #openbsd #bsd #runbsd

Responding to clear up some confusion and to give you general hints as you discover more about the system. Feel free to ignore if you wanna discover in your own time via man and info pages. Keybind notation in this post uses emacs notation. Ex: C-A-d means: Control + Alt/Meta + The literal letter d @nibori said: Without much structure or thought, might serve as a record, for me or others. Installer: from usb stick, the install experience is nice! Just hardcore enough that I feel the system assumes I have some idea about computery things, but not brew to the point of confusion. For example, at one point it asks which install target, and prompts "sd0 sr1 ?" (or such.. maybe a b... don't take my word). On pressing ? it gives a brief oneliner of each device. Just enough to make the choice, just brew enough I'm amazed. At one point install prints "relinking to make unique kernel". Wow. Booting: after entering passphrase, it gives me "boot>". Okay... Boot you say? So I type "boot", half-expecting based on past grub experience I will see some arcane message. But instead it actually boots! Neat. You can also just wait it out, IIRC after some timeout (can't remember how long), it'll automatically run that command for you. OFC you can interrupt this timer by typing anything. This is particularly useful if you wanna boot a different kernel such as bsd.rd (which is a ramdisk kernel that contains the upgrade/install stuff and a basic shell environment for emergencies): boot> boot bsd.rd or to boot the single processor kernel rather than a muliprocessor kernel on a multiprocessor machine while troubleshooting: boot> boot bsd.sp You can also get a list of commands available at this boot prompt which may prove useful in some scenarios: boot> help On login to system, there's a welcome mail with instructions. The man pages indeed work! Could connect to wifi with just using ifconfig. Well, needed fw_update first to get the wifi driver. Where are the logs though? Linux would spray dmesg with link state foo bar, or wpa auth so and so.. here I didn't notice similar. Minor correction. Like the name suggests, fw_update just updates/installs missing firmware needed by drivers. Since OpenBSD's kernel is non-modular, all this command does is let some particularly non-free devices behave correctly by letting the built-in kernel drivers load the needed firmware. This fw_update utility doesn't "install" drivers. You can preserve ifconfig settings across reboots with hostname.if files too btw. man hostname.if As for logs, for the whole system (with some exceptions), usually they go into some subdirectory/subfile of /var/log. Plaintext OFC for sanity. For ifconfig specific information, just run ifconfig against your interface name. Eg: ~ $ ifconfig em0 em0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 lladdr 34:17:eb:ac:6d:bf index 1 priority 0 llprio 3 media: Ethernet autoselect (none) status: no carrier (Sidenote: the feeling when you adjust ifconfig and route, it still doesn't work, and it turns out be a flaky cable... flood ping for the rescue) Congrats! ifconfig is one of my favorite features of OpenBSD's configuration. Looking at the filesystem. Looks clean! Hm, no /proc, /sys? Where do I get some stats about the battery? Will discover later. man apm man apmd man sysctl man sysctl.conf Consoles... multiple consoles anyone? Alt+F2 doesn't work. Maybe it is the key mapping, or maybe it is not supposed to have multiple consoles by default? Just like Linux, which you may be already familiar with, you use C-A-Fn, where n is the tty number you want to navigate to, corresponding to a "Function" key on your keyboard. By default X11 launches on tty5 and kernel messages are on tty1. The rest are login(1) prompts. You can inspect /etc/ttys to learn about the default tty config. man ttys Hm, what could be the equivalent of "loadkeys"? Well, can work with en layout for now. man wscons man wsconsctl man wsconsctl.conf man kbd startx gives me xterm and xclock, with a blue-red colorscheme. Wicked. I'd suggest using the XenoDM rc script and login manager. It is more secure. Just using xinitrc/startx doesn't lock the tty that X11 runs in so a passerby can just C-A-Fn then C-d/C-z to fork to the x11 process to bg and get a free shell in your name. With XenoDM, it dedicates a tty for X11 only (tty5 by default) so you can't use anything other than x11 in that tty. It also correctly handles privsep/privdrop whereas startx/xinitrc does not which can fix some quirks you may come upon. man rcctl man xenodm man xsession man rc.subr pkg_add works. pkg_info executed plainly gives a list of explicitly installed packages! I love the OpenBSD package system. Super simple and easy to use. Fun fact! They're just perl scripts. To be continued, eventually... Godspeed. Enjoy OpenBSD! Happy Hacking!

See: http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/vaxfp.html ping: https://framapiaf.org/@miodvallat@hostux.social/116446563168449035

The unseen hero of OpenBSD: otto’s malloc What this is about This is me learning about OpenBSD’s malloc. I try not to do a surface-level overview. I want to understand the internals better, the data structures, the design decisions, and why those decisions make heap exploitation so much harder. What malloc actually does Every C program that needs memory at runtime calls malloc. malloc is a library function. It’s not a syscall – it’s a layer between your code and the kernel. https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/openbsdmalloc/index.html

The latest would be that it's deprecated and will eventually be replaced: https://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260415050032 I personally enable do hw.smt=1 when rebuilding base as it finishes about twice as fast, but I don't notice performance differences other than in compilation.

In Japanese, though, possibly you'll be interested. I myself never tried, but there's LUNA 68k/88k emulator, nono introduced here. Upstream here (Japanese site).

See: https://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260415050032

See: https://www.tumfatig.net/2026/redundant-dhcp-server-and-dns-resolver-using-openbsd-and-freebsd/