Posts Tagged ‘OpenBSD’

FOSDEM 2013

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

Last week I attended a conference on open source software called FOSDEM in Brussels, the two day event has lots of tracks, based on either specific projects or topics such as Java or securiy.

I attended the following talks
On Saturday
XMPP 101
The Open Observatory of Network Interference
Practical Security for developers, using OWASP ZAP
The future of X.org on non-Linux systems
Declarative style GUI programming
How to build an Identity Management System on Linux

On Sunday
The Lua Scripting Language in the NetBSD Kernel
Supporting the new C and C++ standards in FreeBSD
Improvements in the OpenBSD IPsec stack

My favourite talk of the event was the OWASP talk on Saturday by Simon Bennetts who did a great job of clearly explaining what ZAP can do & how it is of use for testing the security of your web application.
The XMPP 101 talk gave an overview of what the protocol can do, the OONI talk had a very late start & laptop issues, didn’t get much from the talk but it does seem like an interesting project from the info on the website. Matthieu Herrb  talked about the progress of running X.org on UNIX, conclusion “Tough times for non-linux systems”. Marc Balmer gave two talks on using Lua, first in GUI programming & the second on the lua(4) subsystem in the NetBSD kernel, allowing users to explore the system easily & doing rapid prototype without the initial steep learning curve of learning C & kernel internal, making the system internals easily accessible. The last talk on the Security track was on FreeIPA, luckily the slides were quiet detailed as it was impossible to hear the speaker because the mic was hanging too low off  his shirt collar.

The BSD track on Sunday was where I spent most of the day. David Chisnall spoke about the C & C++ standards & the mistakes made by the standards groups which we have to live with. I spent the lunch break talking with David about FreeBSD, how I struggle with doing buildworld on my X61s, what can be done to speed up buildworld, why the buildworld process takes so long & the tools Juniper has developed which allow you to track the dependency path for building each component in FreeBSD base.
Mike Belopuhov spoke about the IPsec stack & NAT64 support in OpenBSD, I had an opportunity to ask Mike about dead peer detection, in my previous site to site VPN deployment I had issues where if the connection dropped at either site, the tunnel with not be re-established, needing manual intervention, It was good to hear that this was a problem with the isakmpd & not necessarily a configuration issue.

There were a lots of projects & businesses with stands, Oreilly had a stand selling books, Google were in the recruitment section, Oracle with three big banners for java, mysql & something else, the lady on the stand was very friendly, telling me about how Oracle participates in open source software such as Java, the penny then dropped about the update 13 release.
It was good to see CAcert had a stand and were looking very busy with assurances. I visited the mozilla stand & had the opportunity to try out the firefoxOS on a nexus s?
I’m strongly considering moving to it as I’d rather go with firefoxOS than android, the lock down of iOS is very painful for sharing data between my own devices & makes it frustrating for getting content from several devices to a single place.
I visited the google stand to talk to the recruiters there, I was curious to learn about their recruitment process, since 2007 I have been approached by Google on 3 different occasion, the most recent being back in July last year. I always assumed they had drives every so many years & I’d just been lucky to have been listed on three separate occasions, it turns out actually that once you’re on their radar, they will make contact every once in a while to see if your situation has changed & if have developed sufficiently since last time to be able to pass the interview tests.
I spoke with others regarding this, with those now employed by them & those who have also been approached in the past, discussing why systems folks are sought after & what options you have should you wish to no longer be contacted (supposedly under Californian law, if a person requests a company to never be contacted again, the company has to comply?).

Over the weekend I spotted a few OpenBSD tops (more hoodies than t-shirts) & met my first MirBSD user/developer, Benny Siegert who was the organiser of the BSD track at FOSDEM.
I also had the opportunity to meet up with/bump into folks from communities such as MetaBUG, OSHUG, LOSUG, Brighton 2600, London *BSD, it was good to catch up.

Goodbye Alphastation

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

My second cool legacy UNIX workstation which got me started on FreeBSD & OpenBSD, I obtained this workstation back in the summer of 2002, I first tried Redhat Linux 7.2 which was available as a free download as a promotion to demonstrate the optimisation ability of the Compaq compiler suite for the Alpha. It was a terrible experience consistent with my previous attempts at running Linux up to that point ( I’d started off on Slackware in 96, moved onto Redhat 5.2 followed by Suse 6.2 ), I soon dropped it & moved onto Debian 3.0 (Woody) which was ok but the 7 cd set was a bit too much hassle for doing package installs, the performance wasn’t much better with the compared to the “optimised” Redhat so I moved onto NT 4.0 workstation & FX32! & ran that for a bit before getting bored. In the new year FreeBSD 5.0 release was announced & Alpha was a supported platform so I gave it try on this machine, armed with a copy of the handbook & the help of IRC I made a lot of progress, first by dropping 5.0 & going back to version 4.7 after being told either x was broken in 5 or y was a bug in 5 too many times. I was blown away by how much faster it was compared to the so-called “optimised” edition of Redhat.
Towards the end of 2003 I started thinking about trying OpenBSD as a firewall after hearing about PF & deployed it when 3.4 was released, the Alphastation served as my gateway connected to a 512k/128k cable modem connection but ended up dropping it & moving to i386 when 3.5 was released because php mysql extension was broken on alpha & I wanted to launch this blog.
After that the Alphastation was used less & less over the years so I passed it onto a fellow techie who would appreciate it.

Beginning LaTeX – Typesetting the OpenBSD FAQ

Monday, May 30th, 2011

I attended a one day training course held by the UK TUG back in July of last year which introduced beginners to LaTeX.
It was relatively simple to get up & running & we were able to put together basic documents with ease after a little practice.
Slides from the course
Handout from the course
To apply what I’d learnt on the course I decided to typeset the OpenBSD FAQ to get me on my way with LaTeX as the official PDF available for download appears to be generated using a pdf printer from the website which is great (links & chapters are there & working) but I don’t think it look that great.
A beautiful OS deserves beautiful documentation! :)
So I had a brief attempt at it the days proceeding the course & got side tracked after doing the very basics on the first 4 chapters. Nearly a year on, I thought I’d have another stab at it.
The tex files are in a Mercurial repo & there’s a PDF too :)
I’ve managed to get 10 of the 15 sections from the faq into tex files so far, with basic formatting applied to text, but there are lots to do yet e.g links, tidying up formatting, setting a typographical convention & applying it consistently.

ThinkPad X61s

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

I couldn’t justify spending £1400+ on a built to order MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM, I settled on what has turned out to be a mint condition X61s with 8 cell battery & still under warranty for £172.98.
I’m really pleased with it so far but it’s still no MacBook Air (I went into the Apple store to double check) :)
Though they’re both “ultraportable laptops” they both scratch a totally different itch for me, the macbook is a sleek, tightly integrated with Mac OS, the ThinkPad is an extendible machine which is far more accommodating to various operating systems.
The reason I was looking to move to an ultraportable was so I have something I can with me at all times (obviously) which was to replace my back breaking 17″ MacBook Pro with the ability to run multiple operating systems with ease.
I was able to successfully multi-boot MacOS, FreeBSD & OpenBSD on my MacBook Pro using the gtpsync tool from rEFIT but support for the hardware wasn’t great e.g as It had an nVidia graphics card there was no resume support on OpenBSD, power management didn’t really work under FreeBSD either If I remember right & having a single mouse button meant it was a pain to use X, having to use workarounds with the eject button on the keyboard to emulate right clicks.
The 11″ MacBook Air seemed like the perfect machine for me, but the whole sealed unit really grinds my gears, it’s not that I wanted to take a screw driver to it but I’d like to have the option to extend the system at a later date instead of having to decide on the system configuration which would be set in stone, requiring a new system if I wanted to expand, the ram being the most important thing, buy it with 4GB of ram or be stuck with 2GB. Though 2GB is fine for OS X alone, it really doesn’t cut it when you’re multi tasking with iChat, Terminal.app, iTunes, Thunderbird, Safari, Omniweb or Opera. These are the apps which are usually always open on my system & my 2007 Mac Mini really struggled with this work load with 2GB or RAM, grinding to a halt regularly as the system swapped furiously, moving to 3GB gave the machine a new lease of life & stopped this behaviour, I would hate to be in the same position with a new system so the BTO Air was the only option for me.
I would also be stuck with another nVidia based system if I went for the Macbook Air which means I would still have problems with sleep & X acceleration so the second hand Thinkpad X61s with the intel chipset was the way to go.
The machine is currently multi-booting OpenBSD-CURRENT, FreeBSD-CURRENT & OpenIndiana 148a development build quiet happily.
The system works a treat under OpenBSD, sleep support is still not there in FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT but I suspect that may just be a bug in acpi_ibm(4). I was hoping to be running Schillix on this system but was unable to get the system to boot after install, I suspect a change in device paths between booting from the optical drive in the ultrabase & hard disk is the cause but didn’t look into it in-depth settling for OpenIndiana after trying Solaris 11 express (which freaked out after the rwn driver was installed) while I work through the DTrace book , though I’ve compiled in dtrace support for FreeBSD & it’s there out of the box on MacOS X most of the examples in the book don’t work as covered in the book on these platforms.

Hardware wise I ditched the supplied intel wireless card & installed a AzureWave AW-NE766 Ralink chipset wireless card. The ThinkPads check minipci-e & wireless usb devices against a device id whitelist in the bios & if not listed the system presents a “1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in – Power off and remove the miniPCI card” error & refuses to boot. Reflashing the bios with a modified bios image by someone called Zender turns this off & allows the system to boot without any problems.

All in all a great system which is cheaper than a netbook, far superior in build & spec but inferior to a MacBook Air in some ways :)

OpenBSD 4.8 dmesg
FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT dmesg

Jetway J7F2WE1G5D-OC-PB

Saturday, November 24th, 2007

6 Months ago I bought a mini itx motherboard to replace my current ancient web server / firewall, I went for the Jetway J7F2WE1G5D-OC-PB as it was cheaper then the VIA ones & it also supports expansion via daughterboards, there’s a whole range to choose from, I went for the AD3RTLAN-G which gives you three additional gigabit interfaces which are based on the Realtek 8169 chipset. Sadly this chipset does have some limitations as mentioned in re(4) on OpenBSD
The RealTek 8169, 8169S and 8110S chips are only capable of transmitting
Jumbo frames up to 7440 bytes in size.

But I’m sure that should be good enough for a network of 1 user! =)

Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I well get OpenBSD 4.2 installed on this box & replace the current server, the only holdup for me atm is the builtin VIA Rhine-II interface doesn’t support adjustment of the mtu, which is going to cause some problems as I’m using pppoe(4) & don’t want use mssfixup in PF, using one of the gigabit interfaces instead would be a waste.

Dmesg from the 21/11/07 snapshot of -CURRENT

Using the CPAN shell / Installing Bundle::CPAN on OpenBSD

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Before you can use the CPAN shell on OpenBSD you need to install p5-LWP-UserAgent-Determined from the ports tree/packages.

Otherwise you wont be able to fetch any components properly
eg:

Fetching with Net::FTP:
ftp//cpan.sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Couldn't fetch 01mailrc.txt.gz from cpan.sunsite.ualberta.ca
Trying with "/usr/bin/lynx -source" to get ftp://CPAN.mirror.rafal.ca/pub/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
gzip: /root/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt: unknown suffix: ignored

& the process will bomb out with MD5 checksum errors eg:


Trying with "/usr/bin/lynx -source" to get
ftp://CPAN.mirror.rafal.ca/pub/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/Bundle-CPAN-1.853.tar.gz
gzip: /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/Bundle-CPAN-1.853.tar: unknown suffix: ignored
CPAN: Digest::MD5 loaded ok

Trying with "/usr/bin/lynx -source" to get
ftp://CPAN.mirror.rafal.ca/pub/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CHECKSUMS

Checksum mismatch for distribution file. Please investigate.

Distribution id = A/AN/ANDK/Bundle-CPAN-1.853.tar.gz
CPAN_USERID ANDK (Andreas J. Koenig <andreas .koenig@anima.de%gt;)
CONTAINSMODS
MD5_STATUS
localfile /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/Bundle-CPAN-1.853.tar.gz

I'd recommend removing
/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/Bundle-CPAN-1.853.tar.gz. Its MD5
checksum is incorrect. Maybe you have configured your 'urllist' with
a bad URL. Please check this array with 'o conf urllist', and retry.

Cisco Aironet 350

Saturday, September 23rd, 2006

I normally wouldn’t say this about a Cisco product, but WOW, the 100mW transmit power on the arials means I can get coverage everywhere in my house with this card plugged into my workpad, I struggle with most spots on my Axim, PowerBook or ThinkPad with a Orinocco plugged in.
The only problem I’ve ran into so far is a bug in NetBSD 3.0 (& OpenBSD 3.9 aswell aparently). It seems that once you upgrade to the recent versions of the firmware for this card (5.60 series), the AN(4) driver fails to attach & complains about the record buffer being too small
an0 at pcmcia0 function 0: <cisco Systems, 350 Series Wireless LAN Adapter>
pcic0: port 0x15000440-0x1500047f
ISA IRQ 3 -> vrgiu0 port 9, level high through
pcmcia0: card irq 3
an0: record buffer is too small, rid=ff00, size=198, len=258
an0: read caps failed
an0: failed to attach controller
an0 detached

Once I downgraded to version 5.41 the problem went away!! :)

an0 at pcmcia0 function 0: <cisco Systems, 350 Series Wireless LAN Adapter>
pcic0: port 0x15000440-0x1500047f
ISA IRQ 3 -> vrgiu0 port 9, level high through
pcmcia0: card irq 3
an0: Cisco Systems 350 Series (firmware 5.41)
an0: 802.11 address: 00:0f:90:xx:xx:xx, channel: 1-13
an0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

Checking the NetBSD gnats database I found a PR which has a fix attached though I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.

There is a patch for OpenBSD here which I presume is included in 4.0

Connecting to a Windows PPTP based VPN through a OpenBSD / PF firewall

Thursday, September 21st, 2006

To be able to connect to a Windows based PPTP VPN through a OpenBSD firewall you’ll need to make a couple of changes to allow GRE traffic through.
first add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf:
net.inet.gre.allow=1
net.inet.gre.wccp=1
net.inet.mobileip.allow=1

then add the following to the filter section in your /etc/pf.conf:
pass in on $ext_if proto gre all keep state
pass out on $ext_if proto gre all keep state

To make the changes effective without having to reboot issue the following as root:

sysctl net.inet.gre.allow=1
sysctl net.inet.gre.wccp=1
sysctl net.inet.mobileip.allow=1
pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

Chillispot for OpenBSD

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

I’ve written a port for Chillispot based on the patch submitted to the Chillispot mailing list today by Steve Davies.

You can grab a copy of it here

Spamd Statistics

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

After a quick google round I came across this post on misc@
Sadly the link is now dead, but a copy of the script was reposted onto misc@ again which is handy, I’ve also made a copy of the script available here

Anyway, so I copied the script onto one of my openbsd boxes & fired it up resulting in this rather impressive output:
Spamd statistics: (logfile: /var/log/spamd)
Average
Host Seconds Connections (secs/conn)

great!, spamdb lists a huge list of IP addresses & this is all I’m able to get out of it??
After checking out /etc/syslog.conf I found that I hadn’t added the entry for logging spamd when I reformatted, a quick edit & a kill -HUP later things looked much better! :)

Spamd statistics: (logfile: /var/log/spamd)
Average
Host Seconds Connections (secs/conn)
201.27.29.243: 12 1 12.00
217.22.88.123: 24 1 24.00

Dovecot on OpenBSD file_lock_dotlock() errors

Thursday, July 13th, 2006

If after installing Dovecot on OpenBSD you get the following error when you try to access your mailbox:
open(/var/mail/.temp.host.1234.abcdefg) failed: Permission denied
file_lock_dotlock() failed with mbox file /var/mail/user: Permission denied

then uncomment & change the mbox_write_locks entry in /etc/dovecot from mbox_write_locks = dotlock fcntl to mbox_write_locks = fcntl

Everything should spring to life afterwards! :)

Running Chillispot on OpenBSD, NetBSD & Mac OS X

Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

*** 08/07/06 – Update, the patch just allows Chillispot to build successfully, tun.c needs some more patching before chillispot will work. Sorry :( ***

I have made a patch which will enable Chillispot compile & run on OpenBSD, NetBSD & Mac OS X.

The patch has been tested working on the following versions of O/S’s
OpenBSD 3.9
NetBSD 3.0-STABLE & -CURRENT
Mac OS X 10.4.7
though it should work on previous versions aswell.

To build Chillipot 1.0 first download & extract Chillispot.
Then copy the patch into the Chillispot directory & issue:
patch -p1 < chillispot -1.0.patch

You should get the following result:
patching file src/chilli.c
patching file src/dhcp.c
patching file src/redir.c
patching file src/syserr.c
patching file src/tun.c

For NetBSD & OpenBSD:
Now run ./configure with the relevant switches e.g.
./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
then for OpenBSD: run make install chilli_LDFLAGS=""

For Mac OS X:
Run make install chilli_LDFLAGS="-lcrypto -lresolv"
If compiling fails with the following error:
redir.c: In function 'redir_accept':
redir.c:1400: error: nested functions are not supported on MacOSX
redir.c:1406: error: nested functions are not supported on MacOSX
make[2]: *** [redir.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

then you’re using GCC 4.0.1, use gcc_select to switch to GCC 3.3 by running gcc_select 3.3 then rerunning make. When you’re done you can switch back to GCC 4 by running gcc_select 4.0 surprise surprise!!! :)

Updated Darwin Streaming Server Patch for DSS 5.5.1 on OpenBSD

Monday, May 15th, 2006

Merging the original work of Jeff Ross, Natsuki Sasahara + a pointer from Advisor Joe I have made a new patch which allows Darwin Streaming Server 5.5.1 to compile on OpenBSD

Switching between XFree86 & Xorg

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

To switch between the XFree86 X server & the Xorg X Server on OpenBSD simply delete the X symbolic link
rm /usr/X11R6/bin/X
& create a new symbolic link from your preferred X server to X
e.g for Xorg
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg /usr/X11R6/bin/X
or XFree86 SVGA
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA /usr/X11R6/bin/X

Restoring missing device & specials files in /dev

Tuesday, November 15th, 2005

If you have accidently deleted or have lost a device or special file in /dev, run the following command as root to rebuild the files
cd /dev
MAKEDEV all

PF Statistics

Sunday, July 3rd, 2005

I’ve gone stat & monitoring crazy in the past few weeks, using Hatchet you can generate graphs & charts from the PF log files on the state of PF. Another tool is also available called pfrtg which does a similar job.

NetBoot OS X from a OpenBSD Server & NetInstall from a OpenDarwin NFS Server PT2

Monday, January 3rd, 2005

Get the PDF version of the guide here
All Info in this guide was sourced from the following pages (thnx guys) & the patch is a mod of Mike Passwalls original patch for linux
http://homepage.mac.com/nand/macosx/netboot.html (not english)

http://frank.gwc.org.uk/~ali/nb/

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~/torkel/computer/netboot-macosx.html

http://mike.passwall.com/macnc/

ToDo
Make a patch for dhcpd on OpenBSD 3.6
Make the whole thing run on OpenBSD

NetBoot OS X from a OpenBSD Server & NetInstall from a OpenDarwin NFS Server

Monday, January 3rd, 2005

This project is still yet to be finished, at the moment Im using 2 box’s to carry out the installation, the aim is to have one box running OpenBSD doing everything (unfortunately there is no HFS support within the o/s & Im having problems getting mountd to accept connections from clients on a non reserved port)
I did look at FreeBSD 5.3 with HFS+ support but Its early days for the project thus the system panicked everytime I attempt to copy to the NFS share from another host.

1x PC running OpenBSD which is running a tfptd & hacked DHCPD
1x PC running OpenDarwin which has a HFS formatted volume containing the OS X install files shared via NFS
1x Mac (G3 iBook in my case)

Mac gets boot info & kernel image from OpenBSD box & boots, then connects to the OpenDarwin box & starts the GUI/Setup.

I have managed to succesfully install OS X 10.3 & 10.4 with this setup though how the install files where shared on the OpenDarwin box varied between the NetInstall of 10.3 & 10.4.

Lets go through the core part of the setup which needs to be done independent of which version of OS X you are going to be installing.

1. Install OpenDarwin, as OpenDarwin x86 runs off a UFS partition you’ll need a 2nd partition (atleast 2.2gigs if youre installing 10.4) which you’ll format as HFS so remember to partition manually. Note the partition number you’ve installed onto as you’ll need it in the next step!

2. Upon 1st boot you’ll have to manually specify the location of the root partition manually as OpenDarwin doesnt seem to find it & sits there idle.
Press enter at the prompt to specify boot time options & at the prompt enter
rd=disk#s# convention being disk “disknumber” s “partition number”
Once youre logged in edit /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist & add rd=disk#s# in the string section under the kernel flags key.

3. Now format the 2nd partition using the newfs_hfs tool
newfs_hfs -v pickaname /dev/disk#s#

4. reboot & log back in, if you look in /Volumes/ you should have a folder called pickaname (or whatever name you picked :P )

5. Using the niutil (netinfo util) you need to create a NFS share
niutil . -create /exports/Volumes/pickaname opts maproot=root:wheel
this will create a share accessible by any host to allow specific hosts use the following command:
niutil . -create /exports/Volumes/pickaname clients 192.168.0.bla
to add aditional IP addresses use the append switch:
niutil . -append /exports/Volumes/pickaname clients 192.168.0.bla

6. To start sharing run:
portmap
nfsd -t -u -n 4
mountd

you may want to add these commands to your /etc/rc to save you having to run it everytime.

7. Run ifconfig -a & note the MAC address of your network card.

1.Install OpenBSD 3.5 (in any configuration you like)
2. Download & extract the sources into /usr/src from the the OpenBSD ftp site
3. Download the patch for dhcpd
& apply to source
patch -p0 < obsd_35patch

4. goto /usr/src/usr.sbin/dhcp/server & run make
5. make a backup copy of your original dhcpd & then overwrite with your new copy
cp /usr/sbin/dhpd /usr/sbin/dhcpd.original
cp dhcpd /usr/sbin/

6. With your dhcpd in place, its onto creating the dhcp lease info. open /etc/dhcpd.conf in your editor & paste the following in & edit to your requirements, you’ll need the MAC addresses of your Mac & PC running OpenDarwin

shared-network LOCAL-NET {
option domain-name "domainname.co.uk";
option domain-name-servers 194.168.4.100, 194.168.8.100;
subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0
{option routers 192.168.0.1;
range 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.16;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
allow bootp;
not authoritative;
}
host ibook {
hardware ethernet 00:03:66:55:cf:b8;
fixed-address 192.168.0.33;
filename "BootX";
server-name "192.168.0.1";
}
host darwin {
hardware ethernet 00:04:55:66:dd:b5;
fixed-address 192.168.0.10;
}
}

7. Edit /etc/dhcpd.interfaces & enter the name of the interface which dhcpd will run on, run
ifconfig -a if youre unsure of which interface.
8. Edit /etc/bootparams & specify the locations of the root & private folders that the mac will mount on boot
the convention is
hostname root=path private=path eg
ibook root=192.168.0.10:/Volumes/pickaname private=192.168.0.10:/Volumes/pickaname

9.Now onto enabling the services on boot, open /etc/rc.conf.local in your editor & add the following lines:

bootparamd_flags=""
dhcpd_flags="-q"

then open /etc/inetd.conf & uncomment
tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/libexec/tftpd tftpd -s /tftpboot

10. You’ll need to create a folder on the root of your disc called tftpboot, this folder is going to store the files to boot your mac.
11. Using your Mac or the OpenDarwin box copy the following files from your OS X disks to /tftpboot on your openbsd box:
System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
mach_kernel rename it to: mach.macosx
Extensions.mkext rename it to mach.macosx.mkext

To Install OSX 10.3 (Panther)
As the install is spread over multiple discs & the system reboots after the 1st CD is finished, I didnt bother trying to get a full install going at once, Instead I installed the Core & BSD componenets, then rebooted, mounted the NFS share & installed the other components by hand.
1.Copy the contents of CD1 to your nfs share
pax -r -w -p e /Volumes/Mac OS X Install Disc 1/* /Volumes/pickaname/
2. On your mac you’ll need to set the following variables either at the openfirmware prompt directly or using the nvram tool within OS X

boot-device enet:192.168.0.1
boot-args rf=nfs:192.168.0.10:/Volumes/pickaname

If the installer complains that there is 0 space available on your Mac to install onto then make sure you have a folder called .vol on your NFS share.

Theoretically is should be possible to install Tiger this way aswell but the installer complains that the harddisk on the Mac cannot be installed onto as the system cannot be started from that volume!!!

To Install OSX 10.4 (Tiger)
Simply copy the .dmg of the latest Beta Seed to the /Volumes/pickaname
On your mac you’ll need to set the following variables either at the openfirmware prompt directly or using the nvram tool within OS X

boot-device enet:192.168.0.1
boot-args rf=nfs:192.168.0.10:/Volumes/pickaname:nameoftigerimage.dmg

It should be possible to install 10.3 this way aswell though I havent tried.
If youre planing on only installing from a disk image then theoretically there is no need to create a HFS partition on the OpenDarwin box & If you can get OpenBSD to accept connections from clients on non reserved ports then the OpenDarwin box can be ditched all together.

The Propper way to fire up MySQL PT2

Wednesday, December 1st, 2004

Thanx to WIntellect @BSD Nexus heres a even more propper way to fire up MySQL on OpenBSD, add the following line to your rc.local
/usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe -u _mysql > /dev/null & echo -n ‘ mysqld’;

Starting apc-upsd automatically on boot

Saturday, November 20th, 2004

To start the apc-upsd daemon automatically on boot add the following line to your rc.local file


if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/apc-upsd ]; then
/usr/local/sbin/apc-upsd & echo -n 'APC UPSD '
fi