OpenBSD - Post Install - Wifi - USB - Pkg_add - What do I Think

v 0.3

29 Sep 13

Well, I've been the proud user of an OpenBSD 5.4 Snapshot installation, on an Asus VX1 laptop for a few days now. My initial impressions are pretty damn good.  Yes it is a basic install (hey, the ISO is only 200 meg or so) but it is clean and uncluttered.  It lets you build the system you want without any crap you don't want - and THAT helps security.  Whilst OpenBSD installs quickly, don't expect a system that can do work "out of the box" - if you do, then you will be sorely disappointed and will miss what is truly a gem.  If you want something like that, then PC-BSD is perfect for you, or on the Linux side something like Ubuntu - or even Debian or Slackware.

Take a couple of relaxing breaths, and tinker and read and gradually you will understand and build your system.

Wireless and USB

As for me, well, I was able to configure the Ethernet port during install, however the Intel Wifi card would not work.  After some reading and checking the man page for it, I worked out I had to either download the firmware directly from the OpenBSD site, or use the specialised program which checked what was needed, downloaded and installed the firmware automatically.

Man page for wpi (my card) is here:

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=wpi&sektion=4

There are two ways you can install the firmware

1. Have a wired ethernet link and use fw_update

2. Download the firmware on another computer, transfer the firmware to the laptop and run pkg_add from the directory the firmware is in.

Of course, if you are going to copy the file to your machine, you will probably use a USB memory stick.  The documentation for this is thorough and I was most impressed to see my USB sticks recognised and easily mounted.

Once the firmware is installed, then you need an appropriate config file in " /etc ".  I got the wireless card to work by putting this line in " /etc/hostname.wpi0 " 

dhcp nwid [SSID] wpakey [PASSWORD]

Packages

Package Management - again, the man page is your friend.  I found using an http mirror to be far more reliable than an ftp mirror, which kept dropping out and failing.  You need to configre " pkg.conf " with mirror sites or package directories .. you can put in more than one.  As mentioned below - if you have the packages in the default directory, then there is no need to specify that directory.

/etc/pkg.conf

installpath=http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/packages/i386/ 

Remember the trailing "  /  "

Where do they go?

Downloaded packages can be found in " /var/db/pkg "
Installed programs are in " /usr/local/share "

... Later