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OpenBSD 7.1 (i386) with xfce 4.16 on a Thinkpad X60
(2006 vintage) with a 500Gb mechanical drive and 3G of RAM. The steps
below show examples from OpenBSD 7.0 except for the sections on xfce,
the .xsession file and on apmd. Links to the man pages have been updated
to 7.1. --April 23 2022
Two main changes:
1) Fan control and apmd, see the section called 'Enable
power management'.
2) Change in the .xsession file,
see the section called 'Shutdown from within xfce'.
Previous versions of this page [ 5.5 | 6.2 | 6.3 | 6.4 | 6.5 | 6.6 | 6.7 | 6.8 | 7.0]
This page is aimed at people who are familiar with Linux and who wish to explore OpenBSD. I'm assuming that you
nano to modify
configuration filesThe OpenBSD base system comes with complete and carefully edited documentation for each command and for many of the configuration files. So why did I write this page?
I personally found it difficult to select and apply the information I needed to a specific task (in my case installing a desktop environment on a laptop). It took me a bit of time to work out how OpenBSD worked and several iterations to work out which bits of information were important. I also needed to 'unlearn' some Linux thinking. I wrote the first version of this page simply to remind myself of the steps and commands to use. I've been rewriting it for each version of OpenBSD to see how the project develops.
I hope this page will
/var/mail/yourusername after
a fresh install/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/ after installing binary
packages using pkg_addBe careful about searching for information about OpenBSD on the Web. Many helpful people publish pages and social media posts about their discoveries but the information can be out of date. The OpenBSD project is fine about changing the way things work and quite good at getting rid of old things. You will notice that I associate this guide with a specific OpenBSD version and that I try to keep it up to date with the releases.
Read the OpenBSD FAQ - Installation Guide. The Pre-Installation Checklist section mentions the need to check that your laptop is compatible with OpenBSD. Pain points are video cards (nvidia issues) and the WiFi adaptor (see the Connect to the Internet section on this page).
I booted my ancient Thinkpad X60 from a USB stick I had prepared with
the i386 architecture install image. I avoid dual booting
operating systems so that OpenBSD is the only operating system to be
installed on the laptop.
The OpenBSD installer asks a series of questions and gives sensible defaults in [square brackets]. I chose to use the [W]hole drive for OpenBSD and to accept [A]utomatic partitioning.
There were three points in the installation where I had to provide non-default input (in addition to providing a root password and a user account and password)...
Yes to the question about the X Window System
being started by xenodm. Xenodm is the OpenBSD
fork of the xdm display manager. The OpenBSD FAQ
discourages use of the startx command to manage X
sessions.Let's install the sets! you have to
specify that the sets are located on disk, No
the disk is not mounted, and then type the label of the USB stick
(probably sd1).Yes to the question about the
missing SHA256.sig file. See the FAQ for the reason!After the installer completes (about five minutes on the X60) you can reboot into the graphical log-in screen and type your user name and password.
fvwm)Background reading: OpenBSD FAQ - The X Window System.
OpenBSD base contains three window managers for use with X Windows.
The default choice is an ancient version of fvwm and this
is what should visible now.
There should be an xterm terminal window in the top left
of the screen. The default terminal prompt is the machine name ('foo'
for me) and the $ sign showing that the terminal has ordinary user
rights. Click on the title bar of that window to give it focus
(and bring it to the front if there is another window in the way). That
terminal window will enable the completion of the next 4 steps.
The fonts might be very small on a modern laptop screen. With the mouse pointer over the window press Ctrl and click the right hand mouse button. A font menu will appear. Select Huge size to get readable characters.
The 'system bell' can become intrusive. To silence it on a temporary basis just type
foo$ xset b off
If the fvwm desktop in all its 90s glory becomes
annoying a console (aka tty) can be used. Ctrl-Alt F2 will take you to a
tty login from where all the commands in the next 4 sections can be run.
Ctrl-Alt F5 returns to the X Windows 'shell'.
If the computer must be closed down before the xfce4 desktop environment is installed and configured use these commands as root
foo$ su
password: # type the root password
foo# shutdown -ph now
You can edit the /etc/X11/xenodm/Xsetup_0 file as root so that the bleep is off and the xconsole does not start up each time you log in. The lines I changed in this file are shown below...
# Edits to silence the bell and not have the xconsole
#${exec_prefix}/bin/xsetroot -fg \#6f6f6f -bg \#bfbfbf -bitmap ${prefix}/include/X11/bitmaps/root_weave
#${exec_prefix}/bin/xconsole -geometry 480x130-0-0 -daemon -notify -verbose -fn fixed -exitOnFail
${exec_prefix}/bin/xsetroot -solid darkgreen
${exec_prefix}/bin/xset b off
${exec_prefix}/bin/xset b 0 0 0
I commented out the line that starts the xconsole and
added two lines that should stop the bleeps. I also change the
background colour of the X11 screen for fun.
You need to edit this file as root. Become root by
typing su - in a terminal window and typing the root
password. There are two editors available on the terminal in a default
OpenBSD install, vi and mg. The
mg editor is a very cut-down work-alike for
emacs. I personally find nano easier to use
and I usually edit this file after I have wifi working and have
installed nano.
Skim the OpenBSD FAQ - Networking, especially the Wireless Networking section.
Networking interfaces are named by the type of card or driver used
(no wlan0 or eth0) and interfaces are managed
using ifconfig. The X60 has the following interfaces
available when I remember to plug in the old Netgear USB WiFi
adaptor...
foo# ifconfig -a | grep flags
lo0: flags=8049 mtu 32768
em0: flags=8802 mtu 1500
enc0: flags=0<>
urtw0: flags=808a43 mtu 1500
pflog0: flags=141 mtu 33172
So I have one ethernet card em0 and one wifi card
urtw0. The lo, enc and
pflog are virtual interfaces that are enabled by default
and used by the system.
Each supported driver has a man page e.g. man em
for the Intel ethernet driver on this machine. The man
urtw page mentions that you don't need any additional
firmware. Some wifi cards, e.g. Intel (iwm) need to install additional
firmware.
There is a list of the supported WiFi cards in the Wireless Networking section of the OpenBSD FAQ.
If you can plug a network cable into your router, you can start and Internet connection by issuing these commands in a terminal window.
foo# ifconfig em0 up
foo# dhclient em0
You can test the connection and DNS lookup using ping
foo$ ping google.com
PING google.com (142.250.200.46): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 142.250.200.46: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=48.536 ms
64 bytes from 142.250.200.46: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=65.286 ms
64 bytes from 142.250.200.46: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=55.360 ms
64 bytes from 142.250.200.46: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=64.321 ms
^C
--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 48.536/58.375/65.286/6.874 ms
Once connected you can issue the fw_update and
syspatch commands (see below).
I have used my external usb WiFi adaptor to connect to WiFi without needing extra firmware.
To connect to a WiFi network called KEITHS-HOUSE automatically on boot you can use a hostname.if
file with the lines below where pass_phrase is the password.
foo$ cat /etc/hostname.urtw0
join KEITHS-HOUSE wpakey pass_phrase
dhcp
If you don't want to deal with vi or mg,
you can use the echo command to add the lines to this file
(notice the use of >> in the second line so the dhcp
command is appended to the file)...
foo# echo "join KEITHS-HOUSE wpakey pass_phrase" > /etc/hostname.urtw0
foo# echo "dhcp" >> /etc/hostname.urtw0
foo# sh /etc/netstart
The sh /etc/netstart command can be used to restart
networking after changes to the configuration files.
See man
ifconfig especially the section about IEEE 802.11 (WIRELESS
DEVICES). Note that the commands below use the iwm0
interface on another machine. Just substitute the WiFi driver for your
card for iwm.
You can find out what WiFi connections are available using the
ifconfig iwm0 scan command
foo# ifconfig iwm0 scan
Below is an extract of the output of this command before I connected to any WiFi network (some IP numbers and MAC addresses altered)...
foo# ifconfig iwm0 scan
iwm0: flags=808843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,AUTOCONF4> mtu 1500
lladdr e8:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
index 2 priority 4 llprio 3
groups: wlan egress
media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (HT-MCS0 mode 11n)
status: active
ieee80211: join KEITHS-HOUSE chan 9 bssid 28:ff:ff:ff:ff:1f 49% wpakey wpaprotos wpa2 wpaakms psk wpaciphers ccmp wpagroupcipher ccmp
nwid "Mobile Hotspot" chan 6 bssid a4:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 89% HT-MCS7 privacy,spectrum_mgmt,short_slottime,wpa2
nwid SKY1296E chan 11 bssid d0:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 52% HT-MCS15 privacy,short_slottime,radio_measurement,wpa2
nwid "" chan 9 bssid 28:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 49% HT-MCS15 privacy,short_preamble,short_slottime,wpa2
As you can see, my home Wifi KEITHS-HOUSE is still
available and because it is mentioned in the hostname.iwm0
file I can use the ifconfig if join command to reconnect to
it when I get back to the house.
There is also "Mobile Hotspot" which is my phone's WiFi
hotspot. Notice how WiFi connection names with spaces in them are in
quotes. The information line for "Mobile Hotspot" contains
wpa2 so I know that my hotspot needs wpa authentication and
I'll need to know the password. My password is of course
password in the example below.
The commands below will stop and restart the imw0 WiFi
card to 'forget' the home WiFi if it is still running and then connect
to "Mobile Hotspot"...
foo# ifconfig iwm0 down
foo# ifconfig iwm0 up
foo# ifconfig iwm0 nwid "Mobile Hotspot" wpakey password
foo# dhclient iwm0
Once you get home again, you can rejoin the KEITHS-HOUSE
network using the ifconfig iwm0 join command...
foo# ifconfig iwm0 join KEITHS-HOUSE
Because the hostname.iwm0 file contains the password and
the dhcp line you don't need to type those.
fw_update)Example dialogue below from OpenBSD 7.0 on a Thinkpad L440.
If you can get an Internet connection on a laptop you can update the
firmware using the fw_update command...
foo# fw_update
inteldrm-firmware-20201218: ok
intel-firmware-20210608v0: ok
iwm-firmware-20210512: ok
uvideo-firmware-1.2p3: ok
vmm-firmware-1.14.0: ok
foo#
As you can see above my Thinkpad L440 can use firmware for the built in WiFi, the video card and the processor microcode.
The fw_update
man page mentions the fw_update -p flag. You can
download the WiFi firmware direct from OpenBSD's firmware archive on
another machine, copy it to a usb stick, mount that stick on OpenBSD and
then supply the path to the firmware package in the fw_update
-p command.
I haven't tested this process myself as I can always plug a network cable into my router.
syspatch)Example dialogue below from OpenBSD 7.0.
Read the OpenBSD FAQ -
System Management page about Security Updates. For the last few
versions, OpenBSD has provided binary updates using the syspatch
command. You can find details of the patches available by checking
the Erata page for
the OpenBSD version you have.
foo# syspatch
Get/Verify syspatch70-001_nsd.tgz 100% |****************| 760 KB 00:01
Installing patch 001_nsd
(...snipped lines)
Get/Verify syspatch70-008_mrt.tgz 100% |****************| 139 KB 00:00
Installing patch 008_mrt
Relinking to create unique kernel... done; reboot to load the new kernel
Errata can be reviewed under /var/syspatch
foo#
See OpenBSD FAQ - Package Management.
Software not included in the OpenBSD base is ported to
OpenBSD by volunteers in the ports team. The pkg_add
command is used to install pre-compiled binary packages. There is
dependency tracking and packages can be updated using pkg_add
-u and deleted using the pkg_delete
command.
OpenBSD has a global mirror system that is accessed through a content
delivery network and the address of the package repository is written to
/etc/installurl during installation. The commands below
will install my preferred command line editor nano.
The example below is from OpenBSD 7.0
foo# pkg_add nano
quirks-4.54 signed on 2022-01-09T19:08:35Z
quirks-4.54: ok
nano-5.8:libiconv-1.16p0: ok
nano-5.8:gettext-runtime-0.21p1: ok
nano-5.8: ok
The quirks-4.54 package is a special internal package
that is loaded every time you use pkg_add. For details of
how to remove packages and then remove dependencies that are no longer
required, see man
pkg_delete and the FAQ. In OpenBSD 7.1 look for
quirks-5.5
Some people seem to like the default
fvwm window manager with some careful configuration
changes. Others prefer the cwm
window manager that is available within OpenBSD. Personally, I find a
'traditional' desktop environment easier to use and more familiar to
other people. I like the xfce desktop environment, but Gnome, Mate and
KDE are also available in packages.
The OpenBSD port of xfce4 is version 4.16 and the commands below will provide a full install of xfce and a Web browser and a pdf document reader.
The OpenBSD project's page about the
i386 architecture is clear that some packages may not
be available for the 32 bit processor. One casualty is Firefox, so I've
use Seamonkey on this old Thinkpad X60. I also use xpdf as
the reader for pdf files as it uses the venerable Motif graphics
library in preference to the heavier libraries.
foo# pkg_add xfce xfce-extras seamonkey xpdf xfce4-power-manager upower
This command will take some time to return as pkg_add
will fetch the dependencies for each of the packages listed above -
dozens in the case of Xfce.
foo# pkg_add xfce xfce-extras firefox evince xfce4-power-manager upower
quirks-4.54 signed on 2022-01-09T19:08:35Z
|No change in quirks-4.54
...some significant time depending on the internet connection...
xfce4-power-manager-4.16.0:consolekit2-1.2.4: ok
xfce4-power-manager-4.16.0: ok
#foo
This example is from OpenBSD 7.0 and shows how some packages provide alternative compilation configurations. The Evince document reader is part of Gnome.
pkg_add will stop when it reaches the document reader
Evince and offer you a choice of two versions of the package, each
compiled with different configuratons...
Ambiguous: choose package for evince
a 0: <None>
1: evince-40.4
2: evince-40.4-light
Your choice: 2
evince-40.4-light:libhandy-1.4.0: ok
evince-40.4-light:unrar-6.02v2: ok
evince-40.4-light:texlive_synctex-2020p0: ok
evince-40.4-light: ok
Option 1 will pull in a large number of Gnome libraries. Option 2 has been provided by the port maintainer for those of us who wish to use Evince to read pdf files with a different desktop or window manager. I use option 2 myself.
.xsession file)Some of the more complex packages come with readme files installed to
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/. The pkg-readmes for the
xfce and firefox packages will be essential reading in the next
section.
The example below is from OpenBSD 7.0, the output is very similar for OpenBSD 7.1.
Running tags: ok
The following new rcscripts were installed: /etc/rc.d/gitdaemon /etc/rc.d/messagebus /etc/rc.d/saslauthd /etc/rc.d/svnserve
See rcctl(8) for details.
New and changed readme(s):
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/consolekit2
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/dbus
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/ffmpeg
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/firefox
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/git
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/glib2
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/gnupg
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/gtk+2
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/gtk+3
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/sdl2
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/upower
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/xdg-utils
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/xfce
--- +hunspell-1.7.0 -------------------
Install mozilla dictionaries for extra hunspell languages.
e.g.
# pkg_add mozilla-dicts-ca
foo#
The package readme for xfce at
/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/xfce explains that you can
add your username to the operator group and be able to
shutdown from the xfce menu.
foo# usermod -G operator username foo# groups username username wheel operator
All that is needed to make xfce the desktop is a couple of lines in the
.xsession file...
foo$ cat .xsession ~/.profile /usr/local/bin/startxfce4
The ~/.profile line was suggested by a reader as being
needed to start xfce4 at all from the xenodm login. In my case, the
addition of that line seems to start xfce more quickly. I think we are
seeing differences between the graphics hardware and drivers. I am using
old Thinkpads, things may have changed on more recent hardware.
Top tells me that d-bus (aka messagebus) is still running when I
start xfce in this way, but there is no need to enable messagebus
explicitly with an rcctl command.
See OpenBSD FAQ - System Management / System daemons.
To enable suspend and resume and to run Xfce with the ability to
control the power settings and to shut down and reboot, you need to
enable the apmd daemon...
In OpenBSD 7.1 the recommended way to enable and start daemons is
using the rcctl
command as root. The commands below will enable and start the OpenBSD
power manager daemon apmd.
foo$ su -
Password:
foo# rcctl enable apmd
foo# rcctl set apmd flags -L
foo# rcctl start apmd
apmd(ok)
The rcctl program actually adds lines to the file
/etc/rc.conf.local and these lines are executed at startup.
You can edit /etc/rc.conf.local directly but using
rcctl provides a layer of error checking &c.
foo# cat /etc/rc.conf.local
apmd_flags= -L
xenodm_flags=
foo#
Notice how apmd has the -L set. The big
change in OpenBSD 7.1 is that apmd -A that sets 'automatic'
power management defaults to full processor speed when mains
power is available. In the case of the Thinkpad X60 this means that both
cores are running at something like 1860MHz continuously. Things get
warm, sysctl tells me that the processor temperature is
around 95 °C. The OpenBSD project has a history of removing
features and functionality from the core distribution if the code
becomes unreliable or causes wider issues, so one has to shrug and deal
with the situation.
Fortunately Solène Rapenne has put together a user space daemon that
can recover the previous behaviour of apmd -A when this
laptop is plugged in. The blog
article summarises the basic commands needed to compile, install and
configure her obsdfreqd daemon, and the code repository
documents more options. It still seems to me a little odd that you have
to compile and confugure a daemon to regain sensible defaults for power
management. Solène appears to be ensuring that her code is compatible
with OpenBSD's format for ports, so I'm hoping that this daemon will
become available as a binary package in future versions.
The following instructions are taken from the blog post
foo# pkg_add git foo$ cd /tmp/ && git clone https://tildegit.org/solene/obsdfreqd.git foo$ cd obsdfreqd foo$ make foo# make install foo# rcctl enable obsdfreqd foo# rcctl start obsdfreqd
I rebooted after starting the obsdfreqd daemon,
and this laptop was idling at around 1GHz and 65 °C on mains which
is similar to the previous default behaviour with automatic power
management set.
/etc/login.conf)Code examples in this section are from OpenBSD 7.0 as there has been no change.
The /etc/login.conf
file sets up the environment when a user logs in, and that includes
setting some resource limits. A default OpenBSD install puts quite a
low limit on the memory that can be used by each program so you might
want to edit the login.conf file to increase the
allocation.
Adding your user to the staff group means that you can
modify the resource limits for the staff users in
login.conf...
foo$ su -
Password:
foo# usermod -G staff keith
foo# mg /etc/login.conf
foo# cat /etc/login.conf
As root I edited the login.conf file so that the
staff:\ stanza has a limit of 4Gb for each program...
#
# Staff have fewer restrictions and can login even when nologins are set.
#
staff:\
:datasize-cur=2048M:\ [increased from 1000M]
:datasize-max=infinity:\
:maxproc-max=512:\
:maxproc-cur=256:\
:ignorenologin:\
:requirehome@:\
:tc=default:
...
I'm not actually sure that I need to add my user to the
staff group. Instead, I could have altered the
default stanza (users with no 'special' role have resource
limits set by the default stanza). I'm still researching
this point.
doas)Code examples in this section are from OpenBSD 7.0 as there has been no change in the xfce version or the commands.
See OpenBSD FAQ -
Disk setup, man
doas, man
doas.conf, and man ntfs-3g after installation.
The ntfs_3g package is not part of base so the man page
isn't online at the man.openbsd.org Web site.
One of the biggest differences in everyday desktop use between Linux
and OpenBSD is the approach to mounting external storage. Automounting of
storage sticks does not just happen in OpenBSD. Remember from
installation that SCSI-like (i.e. SATA) hard drives are numbered
sd0, sd1 and not sda,
sdb as in Linux.
Install pkg ntfs_3g to provide the ntfs-3g
command if like me you use ntfs formatted external hard
drives...
foo$ su -
Password:
foo# pkg_add ntfs_3g
quirks-4.54 signed on 2022-01-09T19:08:35Z
ntfs_3g-2017.3.23p2:e2fsprogs-1.46.2p0: ok
ntfs_3g-2017.3.23p2: ok
foo#
In OpenBSD the doas command replaces the
sudo command to allow users to issue a restricted set of
commands as root.
Add the following lines to a /etc/doas.conf file
permit nopass USER as root cmd mount
permit nopass USER as root cmd umount
permit nopass USER as root cmd ntfs-3g
I need to make a directory in my home drive to mount the usb stick to...
foo$ pwd
/home/keith
foo$ mkdir usb
foo$ dmesg | grep sd1
sd1 at scsibus4 targ 1 lun 0: <Kingston, DataTraveler 2.0, 1.00> removable serial.09511603000059188419
sd1: 3852MB, 512 bytes/sector, 7888896 sectors
To mount a usb stick, in this case FAT format, I run
the following commands...
foo$ doas mount /dev/sd1i ~/usb
foo$ ls usb
daffs.jpg
daffs.png
gcse-rules-and-tools-20130829.odt
music_for_programming_61-linnley.mp3
Unmount...
foo$ doas umount ~/usb
foo$ ls usb
Same for an external hard drive with ntfs format but
using the ntfs-3g command instead of
mount...
foo$ mkdir wd
foo$ dmesg | tail
umass0 at uhub3 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "Western Digital Elements 10B8" rev 2.10/10.12 addr 3
...
foo$ doas ntfs-3g /dev/sd1i ~/wd
foo$ ls wd
BAES Music Software T60 X220-MINT X61ath X61s iso
L440 Pictures T42 T61 X220n X61new X61s-RC1 stuff
foo$ umount ~/wd
foo$ doas umount ~/wd
foo$ ls wd
All works...
xfce4-mount for graphical mountingIt is nicer for desktop users to be able to mount and unmount a device graphically.
The xfce4-mount
allows the mounting and unmounting of USB sticks from the xfce
panel.
Add an icon for the plugin to the XFCE4 panel by right-clicking on
the panel and selecting Panel | Add New Items and
searching for mount.
By default, xfce4-mount-plugin lists all the devices
including the default local hard drive including all the partitions on
sd0. I can set options to prevent that and to use a custom
mount command. Right click over the xfce4-mount
icon and select Properties | File Systems tab.
Add the pattern /dev/sd0* to the Exclude specified
file systems textbox so the local drive is not listed.
Right-click on the xfce4-mount icon,
and select Preferences | Commands and write the
following in the Custom Commands textboxes, after
ensuring that the Custom Commands checkbox was
ticked...
doas mount %m
doas umount %m
Now to ensure that a USB stick is listed in the xfce4-mount-popup
list, you have to add a line for the device to /etc/fstab...
foo# echo "/dev/sd1i /home/keith/usb msdos rw,noauto 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
Using an fstab entry like this means that only one vfat formatted USB thumb drive will be listed and available with mouse clicks.
I have not yet worked out a way of automounting a mix of VFAT and
NTFS drives. Probably a script run instead of doas mount
that will work out what drive it is and mount it to an appropriate mount
point...
Below last tested with OpenBSD 7.0. FAQ seems to be unchanged.
My threat model for this laptop includes casual theft or me leaving it on the bus. A simple drive encryption setup will deny a potential thief or opportunistic finder access to my data. I chose not write random numbers to the whole drive.
Using whole drive encryption on OpenBSD is covered in the OpenBSD FAQ - Disk Setup / RAID and disk Encryption / Full Disk Encryption and I used the example commands exactly except modified to match the disk numbering on this machine.
The process in outline is...
sd0)bioctl command. This becomes sd2 because the installer USB stick is sd1. Set a pass phrase for the disk heresd2 as the disk to install OpenBSD to. I just accept the [A]uto partition choice so disklabel makes the usual partitions within sd2See The
OpenBSD FAQ - Disks and Partitions as well as man 4
sd.
This laptop uses a single SATA hard drive so the machine's disk is
recognised as sd0 by the installer. The USB stick
that I booted the OpenBSD installer from is identified as
sd1. The softraid block device I'm going to create will be
recognised as sd2. That is the device on which I'm going to
install OpenBSD using the automatically created partitions. Once the
installation is complete the softraid block device is renumbered to
sd1 when you reboot. A feature of OpenBSD is that the raw
block device corresponding to sd2 is at
/dev/rsd2c.
The commands I actually used are shown below with indication of what the output might look like (copied from the FAQ) for guidance
Preparing the large disk partition to hold our softraid device
[S]hell # cd /dev && sh MAKEDEV sd0 [skipped the random number step] # fdisk -iy sd0 ## Bios laptop. See FAQ for UFEI / GPT laptop # disklabel -E sd0 Label editor (enter '?' for help at any prompt) sd0> a a offset: [64] size: [much larger than FAQ example] * FS type: [4.2BSD] RAID sd0*> w sd0> q No label changes.
Setting up the encrypted softraid device and setting a passphrase