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Hard Drives Hard drives can be a big performance bottleneck. While IDE drives are cheaper than bricks, they can slow down your system roughly as well as bricks can. A SCSI disk system can transfer data to and from each and every drive on the SCSI bus at the full speed of the SCSI controller, while an IDE controller splits its available throughput between the drives on the bus. Also, a SCSI controller can have up to 15 drives, while an IDE controller can have no more than 2. In a throughput competition, I’ll back 15 drives moving at full speed against 2 drives moving at an average of half-speed any day. Still, if all you have are IDE drives, you can do some things to alleviate these problems. Most important, put your hard disks on separate controllers! Many systems now have a hard drive on one IDE controller and a CD-ROM on the other. When you add a second hard drive, put it on the same controller as the CD-ROM drive. You probably won’t be using the CD-ROM nearly as often as you use the hard drive, after all, and this will reduce contention on each IDE channel. You’ll be happiest with at least 1GB of disk on your system, though I’m assuming in This Blog that you have at least 10GB of disk. If you have a smaller disk, you’ll want to be careful to clean up after yourself. For example, at one point I recommend keeping old source code around for later use; if you don’t have enough disk space, don’t do that! Page 37

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Getting OpenBSD Before you proceed much further, let’s talk about how you can get OpenBSD. OpenBSD is available on CD-ROM and over the Internet. CD-ROMs You can purchase OpenBSD CD-ROMs direct from the OpenBSD Project or from any number of online vendors. Just go to the OpenBSD website and look for the “Getting OpenBSD” link. The OpenBSD Project will be happy to sell you CD-ROMs and assorted other OpenBSD merchandise, such as T-shirts and posters. The main OpenBSD distribution point is in Canada, which may be a problem for those of you in other countries. You can get OpenBSD from a variety of resellers, many of which are listed on the OpenBSD ordering page. Pick a vendor in your country and you can save on customs duties or, at least, you can pick a vendor on your same continent and save on shipping charges! CD-ROM Layout Each of the CD-ROMs contain the software for a few hardware platforms. For example, in the OpenBSD 3.2 CD-ROM set, disk 1 contains the i386 and Alpha software, disk 2 contains the VAX and MacPPC software, and disk 3 contains the Sparc and Sparc64 software. You’ll find some extra tidbits scattered throughout all the CD-ROMs, however, so you can’t just get by with one disk. For example, the operating system source code is kept on disk 3 in this particular release. Here’s a look at the contents of the first CD-ROM. 3.2/ HARDWARE PACKAGES PORTS README TRANS.TBL song32.mp3 The 3.2 directory contains the actual software of OpenBSD 3.2. Almost anything you want to install your software is in this directory. The HARDWARE file gives a brief overview of the hardware this release of OpenBSD supports. It makes an excellent quick reference if you’re wondering about hardware support for your particular machine or architecture. The PACKAGES file gives instructions for installing precompiled software packages on OpenBSD. We cover this information in more detail in Chapter 13. The PORTS file gives instruction for compiling your own software from the ports collection, also discussed in Chapter 13. The README file gives valuable pointers to information elsewhere on the CD-ROM. While I’ve made every effort to be complete in This Blog, if you have any trouble at all always refer to the documentation for the release of OpenBSD you’re working with! Finally, the song32.mp3 file contains a song written to celebrate this OpenBSD release. (It might not be technically necessary, but it’s certainly fun.) Finding OpenBSD on the Net You can install OpenBSD directly from the Internet, over HTTP or FTP. Every bit of OpenBSD is available this way, from programs to source code to add-on packages. You can download the entirety of OpenBSD piecemeal or just grab the entire software distribution from the FTP site. Installing via FTP or HTTP is one of the most popular ways to get OpenBSD. What you will not find on the Internet is a set of official OpenBSD ISO images of any release. The Page 38

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Chapter 2: Installation Preparations Overview I am script kiddie. Windows is warm and tasty, blowfish goes down hard. A successful OpenBSD installation requires the OpenBSD software, supported hardware, and a bit of thought about how you want your installed machine to look and behave. A developer’s multiboot laptop will have very different requirements than a dedicated firewall, which will look completely different than a Web server. Proper preparations will make your OpenBSD installation quick and easy. We’re going to spend a great deal of time on the requirements, considerations, and decisions you need to make before installing OpenBSD. Once you know what you have to do, the actual install process is quite simple. Many of the problems people have installing OpenBSD come from not understanding their many choices. The instructions given in this chapter cover almost all situations, but the final word on installing OpenBSD is the install document included in the release. For example, before installing OpenBSD on an i386, you must read INSTALL.i386 for that release! Note If you have trouble, be sure to check the other documentation discussed in Chapter 1 for people with similar problems. Page 35

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OpenBSD Hardware OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware architectures: i386, Alpha, 32- and 64-bit Sparc, both the 68000 and PowerPC varieties of Macintosh, and a variety of less well-known platforms. Take a look at http://www.OpenBSD.org/plat.html for a full list of supported platforms. This page contains links to a page for each hardware platform, in which the state of hardware support is discussed in full detail. For example, the i386 page gives a full list of all i386-compatible hardware supported in the latest development version of OpenBSD, -current (see Chapter 14). This chapter covers the i386 platform, (aka “80386-compatible” or “Standard PC”), which includes the 386, 486, and Pentium lines and their descendants. They’re the most common machines, and you probably have one sitting around you could use to learn on. In fact, even old systems can run OpenBSD; you probably have something in a back closet that would do nicely. Many of the examples in This Blog were performed on a Pentium 166 with 48MB RAM and a stack of 2GB hard disks. (The extra hard disks weren’t necessary, but I had them, and a computer can always use more disk space.) We’re going to cover installing OpenBSD on both a dedicated machine and on a few varieties of dual-boot systems. Although OpenBSD will work on ancient hardware, that hardware needs to be in good shape. If your old Pentium box kept crashing because it has bad RAM, it won’t behave any better with OpenBSD than it does with its current OS. Also, OpenBSD will be most useful with certain minimum hardware configurations. Here are some basic recommendations, based on my own experiences. These are all i386-based; if you have some other hardware platform, you can draw on these and make your own comparisons. Proprietary Hardware Some hardware vendors over the last ten years thought that it was a good idea to keep their hardware interfaces secret, so that competitors wouldn’t be able to copy their designs. This has generally proven to be a bad idea; a flood of commodity parts has largely trampled this sort of hardware in recent years. Developing device drivers for a piece of hardware without the interface specifications is quite difficult. Some hardware can be supported well without full documentation, such as Intel’s EtherExpress network cards, and is common enough to make struggling through the lack of documentation worthwhile. Other hardware simply cannot be supported without full and complete documentation, such as Sun’s Ultra-SPARC III processor. If an OpenBSD developer has specifications for a piece of hardware and interest in that same hardware, he’ll probably implement support for it. If not, that hardware won’t work. In most cases, unsupported proprietary hardware can be replaced with better and less expensive open versions. Processor Your brand of processor is really irrelevant. OpenBSD doesn’t care if it’s running on an Intel, AMD, or IBM, or even an old Cyrix or one of those nifty Transmeta processors. It simply probes the CPU on booting and uses whatever chip features it recognizes. I’ve run very effective firewalls on 486 machines, easily handling a T1 of traffic. Still, I would recommend that you get 100 MHz or faster CPU. Some of the demonstrations in This Blog take less than 15 minutes on modern AMD1800+ and days on a 25 MHz 486. Although OpenBSD will run on a multiple-processor system, it will only use one processor. If you have a choice between an SMP system and one with a single processor, you may as well just use the single-CPU machine for OpenBSD. Memory (RAM) Memory is good, and the more memory you have the happier you will be. In fact, adding RAM will do more than anything else to accelerate your system. You should have at least 16MB of RAM at a bare minimum, and preferably at least 32. Mind you, if you can get a couple of gigs of RAM in your system, OpenBSD will take full advantage of it. Most weird crashes and unexplainable problems can be traced back to bad memory, so be certain that the memory you are using is good. Memory is the most likely failure point in an old machine. Page 36

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Finally, follow through. If you’re asked for more information, provide it. If you don’t know how to provide it, treat that as another problem. Go back to the beginning of this chapter and try to figure it out. The bottom line is, if you develop a reputation as someone who doesn’t follow up on requests for more information, you won’t even get a first reply. Now that you know how to get more help on OpenBSD, let’s proceed to the installation that’s discussed in the next chapter. [2]In fact, quite a few users of other free UNIX-like operating systems use this sort of mail reader as well. This advice applies equally well to most parts of the free software community. Personally, when I get an email that is unreadable in plain text, I assume that the person who sent it is either ignorant or rude. Ignorant people have nothing to tell me, and I don’t have time for rude people. If you are using a graphic mail client such as Microsoft Outlook, send your mail in plain text. What’s more, be sure to wrap your text at 72 columns. Sending mail in HTML, or without decent line wrapping, is simply an invitation to have your email discarded unread. Page 34

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Formatting Help Requests Quite a few OpenBSD users [2] use a text-based email reader such as mutt. (Quite a few also use graphic-friendly mail readers, mind you.) These are very powerful programs for handling large amounts of email, but they do not display HTML messages. If you are using a graphic mail client such as Microsoft Outlook, send your mail in plain text. What’s more, be sure to wrap your text at 72 columns. Sending mail in HTML, or without decent line wrapping, is simply an invitation to have your email discarded unread. This may seem harsh, but you need to consider to whom you’re writing. Most email clients are simply not suited to handle thousands of messages a day, scattered across dozens of mailing lists and several dozen discussions, in a manner accessible to a human mind. Even the most popular Windows-based email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook, cannot perform such fundamental tasks as discussion threading. I receive thousands of email messages a day, and many OpenBSD developers are in even worse straits. We simply cannot cope without competent mail tools, and HTML is not a necessary part of a competent mail tool. Presentation of a large number of messages in a sensible order is necessary. On a similar note, most attachments are unnecessary. You do not need to PGP sign your email, and those business-card attachments just demonstrate that you really shouldn’t be running OpenBSD. On a similar note, be sure to not use a long signature line. The “standard” for email signatures allows for four lines of text, no more. Long ASCII art signatures, even really nifty ones featuring the official OpenBSD Blowfish, are Right Out. Also, do not send your message to multiple mailing lists. At this point, your messages should almost certainly go to . Most especially, do not cross-post between < misc@OpenBSD.org> and ! Finally, use a good subject line. Many people who receive those thousands of email messages decide what messages to read based entirely on the subject line. Moderately advanced mail readers allow the reader to delete entire discussions based on subject line. Something like “Problem with OpenBSD” will be ignored by the vast majority of people. A subject line like “Internal modem not recognized at boot” will attract readers who are familiar with that sort of problem, and who are best able to help you. Some mail readers do even more sophisticated threading based upon the mail message headers; if you want to start a new discussion on a mailing list, it’s best to compose the message from scratch rather than replying to an existing message. Sending Your Email Finally, put all of your information together and send your question with relevant documentation to < misc@OpenBSD.org>. Yes, there are other mailing lists for discussing OpenBSD, but people who post questions or problems to them are almost overwhelmingly told to go ask on misc@ instead. You might be referred to another mailing list, but it’s much better to post a message to a specific list if that message starts with “The people on misc@ recommended I ask this here.” It’s easy to let frustration turn a simple request into a rampaging demand for immediate assistance. Remember to be polite; the people who are receiving your message may decide to help you out of the goodness of their hearts, but they are under no obligation to do so. If you want someone to be obliged to help you, get a support contract. Also remember, the reason you’re having a problem is because of something you do not understand. You’re seeking enlightenment. If you ask someone to fix your problem for you, you’re going to get a poor response. Responding to Email Your answer may be a brief note with a URL, or even just two words: “man such-and-such.” If that’s what you get, that’s where you need to go. Don’t go asking for more detail. If you have a question about the contents of the reference you’re given, or if you’re confused by the reference, treat that as another problem. Narrow down the source of your confusion and ask about it. Man pages and tutorials are not perfect, and it’s possible that some parts seem to be mutually exclusive or contradictory if you don’t fully comprehend them. Page 33

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Mailing for Help If the mailing list archives, a web search, the OpenBSD FAQ, the OpenBSD website, man pages, and other assorted resources do not answer your question, you can ask for help. The OpenBSD mailing lists are read by a variety of very knowledgeable and skilled computer professionals. Many of these people enjoy working with OpenBSD and want to help new users. These same people have also frequently spent a great deal of time making OpenBSD information available on the Internet and even answering the same question dozens or hundreds of times. Look at all the ways we just explored to get information on cryptographic hardware support in OpenBSD. Most topics have information readily available in the same manner. People who read the OpenBSD mailing lists, and answer questions on them, spent their time writing and distributing all that information. Documenting all this was a lot of work. Now imagine their reaction when they receive a piece of email asking about cryptographic hardware support. The people who write those emails have just confirmed that they want their hand held, or they’re either unwilling or unable to read the available documentation, or they have the intelligence of a brick. The writer is obviously not ready to use OpenBSD. At best, he will be ignored. At worst, some experienced OpenBSD person who wrote all those docs would probably take offense at his hard work being so utterly discounted and flame the questioner badly enough that his monitor will need three months in the Mayo Clinic Burn Unit. Keep that in mind before you send an email. Have you really checked everywhere? Are there any other words you can search under? Performing a few extra searches with different keywords is much faster than composing a useful piece of email and has a very good chance of returning an answer. Discussion Topics If you are familiar with another free UNIX, you might find OpenBSD’s mailing lists a little shocking. OpenBSD users are advanced computer users, almost by definition. If an advanced UNIX user tries to debug a problem with a piece of software, he is generally expected to know enough to ask the responsible party. On support lists for other free UNIX-like operating systems, users are welcome to ask questions on dang near any topic about any piece of software that runs on their chosen platform. The people on these support lists do their best to help out. These support lists, manned by volunteers and dedicated to providing around-the-clock response to whatever question you might ask, are provided by projects that are interested in taking over the world. Remember, though, that isn’t the OpenBSD Project’s goal. The OpenBSD folks will happily assist you with problems with OpenBSD, but software that happens to be running on OpenBSD is another matter. You may be able to get help from an OpenBSD list, if someone on that list happens to use the same software you’re having trouble with, but you shouldn’t count on it. If you’re having trouble porting your preferred window manager to OpenBSD because of some differences in OpenBSD’s libc, the OpenBSD people would love to talk to you. If you can’t configure your window manager the way you’d like, then you need to talk to the people responsible for your window manager. Contents of Help Requests Before you send an email, think about the problem you are trying to solve. What question should you actually be asking here? Define the problem as narrowly as possible. Suppose you cannot connect to your Internet service provider. Is the problem that the internal modem dials, but the ISP rejects your connection requests? Does your modem not dial? Is it detected at all? Each of these is a very different problem, with a different solution. That’s the problem you want to solve. Now that you know what the problem is, you need to gather any and all the information related to the problem. You will include this information in your email. This should include: . The version of OpenBSD you are running. . Your hardware platform. . Any error output. Be sure to check in /var/log/messages as well as your terminal. . /var/run/dmesg.boot . A complete, but narrow, problem description. Page 32
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want to use the OpenSSL cryptographic interface; crypto(9) is for programmers who want to access crypto routines within the kernel; and crypto(4) is for cryptographic accelerator hardware. Type “man 4 crypto” and you’ll see what you want. CRYPTO(4) OpenBSD Programmer’s Manual CRYPTO(4) NAME crypto - hardware crypto access driver SYNOPSIS pseudo-device crypto [count] DESCRIPTION The crypto driver provides userland applications access to hardware cryp to support via the kernel. The /dev/crypto device node primarily oper ates in an ioctl(2) based model, permitting a variety of applications to query device capabilities, submit transactions, and get results. If count given in the specification, and is greater than 0, a maximum of … You may have to wade through some dense technical information, but everything you need to know is right here. Checking the Internet Go to Google and enter “OpenBSD crypto hardware support.” On the day I wrote this, the first page of results gave me a direct link to the relevant OpenBSD web page, a link to a mailing list archive result, and a couple of third-party web pages discussing OpenBSD’s hardware crypto support. Page 31
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Using OpenBSD Problem-Solving Resources Let’s pick a common question and use the OpenBSD resources to solve it. We’ll use several different methods to find an answer. One topic that comes up frequently is that of hardware-accelerated cryptography: how does it work, and what does OpenBSD do to support it? Here’s how you find information on this topic from each of the information sources the OpenBSD Project provides. www.OpenBSD.org If you look at the main page of the OpenBSD website, you’ll find a link pointing to “Integrated Crypto.” That leads you in turn to “Cryptographic Hardware Support.” Read, learn, and enjoy. Man Pages If you just type “man cryptography” you won’t get any matches; there is no “cryptography” man page. It’s frequently called “crypto,” however, and if you try “man crypto” you’ll get something. crypto(3) OpenSSL crypto(3) NAME crypto - OpenSSL cryptographic library SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION The OpenSSL crypto library implements a wide range of cryptographic algorithms used in various Internet stan dards. The services provided by this library are used by the OpenSSL implementations of SSL, TLS and S/MIME, and they have also been used to implement SSH, OpenPGP, and other cryptographic standards. OVERVIEW libcrypto consists of a number of sub-libraries that … Well, that’s not what we want. It’s nice to have OpenSSL documentation on a system that includes OpenSSL, but it doesn’t answer our question. You might give up here, but that’s not what you want to do either. Notice that this manual this page falls in Section 3. Information on hardware belongs in Section 4 of the manual. When multiple man pages share a name, and you don’t give man(1) a section number, the page in the lowest section number is displayed. Try “apropos crypto” to look for all the man pages that include the word “crypto.” You’ll notice the following. … crypto (3) - OpenSSL cryptographic library crypto (4) - hardware crypto access driver crypto (9) - API for cryptographic services in the kernel … There are three different crypto man pages, each in a different section. Crypto(3) is for programmers who Page 30

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Non @OpenBSD.org Mailing Lists You can find a fairly complete list of all OpenBSD-related mailing lists hosted by third parties at http://www.OpenBSD.org/mail.html. This includes a variety of lists in languages other than English, as well as some very narrow, special-purpose lists. One particular mailing list I highly recommend for less experienced UNIX administrators is the OpenBSD Newbies list. To subscribe, send a message to < openbsd-newbies-subscribe@sfobug.org>. Using the Mailing Lists Now that you have a subscription to an appropriate OpenBSD mailing list (hopefully misc, and definitely security-announce), you can go and ask all your questions on that mailing list. You won’t make any friends, though, and you may even be told to shut up and go away. That’s mainly for two reasons: discussion topics are permitted only within a narrow range, and the lists are there to be read and not posted to. Unless you’re in a truly unique situation or really on the bleeding edge of OpenBSD development, someone has probably struggled with your problem before. They’ve probably posted a message to the mailing lists before. They probably got an answer. That answer probably hasn’t changed. The quickest way to get an answer to your question is to find that previous message. That’s where the mailing list archives come in. You can find a variety of mailing list archives on the Net at places such as Geocrawler ( http://www.geocrawler.com/). By far, the easiest way to get access to the mailing list archives is to use a powerful search engine such as Google. Carefully choosing your search terms will get results very quickly. Page 29

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