See:

• https://blog.feld.me/posts/2026/02/using-new-bridges-freebsd-15/

ping: https://framapiaf.org/@ricardo@bsd.cafe/116453396670728593

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

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.

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.

(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)

Looking at the filesystem. Looks clean! Hm, no /proc, /sys? Where do I get some stats about the battery? Will discover later.

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?

Hm, what could be the equivalent of "loadkeys"? Well, can work with en layout for now.

startx gives me xterm and xclock, with a blue-red colorscheme. Wicked.

pkg_add works. pkg_info executed plainly gives a list of explicitly installed packages!

To be continued, eventually...

See:

• http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/vaxfp.html

ping: https://framapiaf.org/@miodvallat@hostux.social/116446563168449035

See:

• https://itsfoss.com/news/playnix-linux-console/
• https://playnix.io/1-11-playnix-console.html

Of course, there's an argument to be made that talking about SPARC ought to live in the Retrocomputing section.

But I still work on SPARC, have a small number of servers (a T4-1 and a couple of T5140s) that support the work. I don't expect this to be of major interest to most, but possibly the most visible part of the SPARC work I do is the OpenJDK port, which supports SPARC and x86 on Solaris and illumos. While the x86 port is current (so supports 17, 21, 25 LTS and everything in between and up to the current development of 27), SPARC goes up to JDK18 at the moment. Fortunately it's good enough to run Jenkins, which has bought people a little bit of time, although the minimum version will get bumped at some point.

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

We are excited to announce the release of GhostBSD 26.1-R15.0p2! This release marks a major milestone as GhostBSD moves to FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE, bringing the latest upstream improvements, including enhanced hardware support, security updates, and kernel advancements. For complete details on FreeBSD 15.0 enhancements, see the FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE notes.

• https://www.ghostbsd.org/news/GhostBSD_26.1-R15.0p2_Is_Now_Available

• https://ostechnix.com/ghostbsd-26-1-released-freebsd-15-xlibre/

See: http://www.rabbitfarm.com/cgi-bin/blosxom/2026/04/12

I use the template Solar on the billboard.

Into the Linux forum, a category tag is displayed, but actually, it's not possible to "understand" what it's wrote into this tag. The text within is “invisible”, unreadable!

See the screenshot:

Hi.
A few minutes ago, I posted the following: https://billboard.bsd.cafe/topic/94/running-your-own-as
I've just noticed that it was posted on Mastodon, as instance: https://bsd.network/web/@ciotbsd@billboard.bsd.cafe/116425567925824807

Is it normal for the HTML code to be displayed in the body of the message?

At work we are uing BSDs extensivly for almost all aspects, except as hardware crypto modules (HSMs). We are also using BSDs as workstations for the daily toil. This of course require a set of usage policies to formalise what is accepted and not.

I'm glad we managed to get NetBSD into the official company policy with the following condition

Must run on workstation/laptop hardware. Coffee brewers, 
toasters or other household appliances are explicitly forbidden 
from accessing production network.

On a sader note, OpenBSD is no longer allowed access, when 7.7 goes out of official support in a few weeks time, due to the decision to remove yubikey-otp keyboard support in the kernel from 7.8.

Oh well

Cheers and RunBSD!

One of my biggest "frustrations" when migrating from OpenBSD to FreeBSD as my daily driver, was the loss of of working media keys on my Das Keyboard - especially the very convenient volume jog wheel.

After some poking around i confirmed that the usbhid driver was working - and also default enabled in FreeBSD15 kernel. Xev tool printed the correct keycode events

keycode 122 = XF86AudioLowerVolume 
keycode 123 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume 
keycode 172 = XF86AudioPlay

The problem narrowed down to how to map these event to something useful

I found a working solution in this discussion thread, by using the x11/sxhkd daemon to pass the events to mixer(8)

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/howto-enabling-multimedia-keys-gamepads-joysticks-for-desktop-usbhid.84464/

I had to tweak the sxhkd config a bit to work properly with mixer

~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc

XF86Audio{Play,LowerVolume,RaiseVolume}         
         mixer {vol.mute="toggle",vol="-3%", vol="+3%"}

Then I invoke the sxhkd daemon from my ~/.xsession file

sxhkd &
exec /usr/local/bin/fvwm3

Viola!

#FreeBSD #Solved #X11 #FVWM3 #Xorg #AskFedi

Part1: Running Your Own AS: BGP on FreeBSD with FRR, GRE Tunnels, and Policy Routing:

• https://blog.hofstede.it/running-your-own-as-bgp-on-freebsd-with-frr-gre-tunnels-and-policy-routing/

Part2: Running Your Own AS: Going Multi-Homed with iBGP and three Transits:

• https://blog.hofstede.it/running-your-own-as-going-multi-homed-with-ibgp-and-three-transits/

Part3: Running Your Own AS: Joining an IXP with a Third Edge Router:

• https://blog.hofstede.it/running-your-own-as-joining-an-ixp-with-a-third-edge-router/

Part4: Running Your Own AS: Direct Hetzner Peering, a Fourth Edge, and Bringing the Home LAN into the Fabric:

• https://blog.hofstede.it/running-your-own-as-direct-hetzner-peering-a-fourth-edge-and-bringing-the-home-lan-into-the-fabric/

Lost and found in Mastodon

TIL: when the Back button in Mastodon can not take me back to something, I can use the web browser to browse back.

Why has it taken more than two years for me to discover something so obvious?

#Mastodon #obvious #TIL @bsdcafelounge

You are a fan of one or more BSD os. Is that BSD (doesn't matter which one) your daily driver, your primary OS on your main computer?

A three-day poll by @darth@silversword.online:

• https://silversword.online/@darth/116404948062081788

To some the current shiny aqua-like orb logo may seem a little dated. I know it does for me. And it's probably a little hard to print and reproduce. We often see a newer logo, which I personally think is a huge improvement. Anyhow, I played around with the design this morning and wanted to share a refined version. Tell me what you think.

See: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-thain-ipv8-00.html
Descr: Internet Protocol Version 8 (IPv8) is a managed network protocol suite that transforms how networks of every scale -- from home networks to the global internet -- are operated, secured, and monitored.

OpenBSD Frens...

What's the latest p00p on hw.smt ?

Been doing some looking around and am not able to suss out what the latest guidance is re: hw.smt and performance.

I get the point about security, just wondering if there are any performance "gotchas" with SMT in the kernel nowadays.

I've seen posts (old) talking about enabling smt in the OpenBSD kernel doesn't get great gains. Is this still current thinking/advice?

I remember when FreeBSD SMT was considered "not that performant" but that's not the case any more. Has OpenBSD followed suit?

Inquiring minds and all that...

I came across this post:

https://phanpy.social/#/hachyderm.io/s/115891592999188880

It describes a very common situation: large SQL dumps, vim becoming
unusable, and ed(1) suddenly making sense again.

This is not accidental.

Screen editors are designed for interactive, cursor-based editing.
When files reach hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes, those assumptions break down.
Startup cost, redraw, navigation, and internal structures become the real bottleneck.

At that point, using tools like grep, sed, awk, or ed is not a
workaround — it is the correct approach.

Key idea:

Large files do not require faster editors;
they require different tools.

Full note:
https://codeberg.org/r1w1s1/code-notes/raw/branch/main/notes/Stop_Opening_Huge_Files_in_Screen_Editors.txt