Root sets sail with his trusted blowfish companion to explore the vast world of 4.4 BSD UNIX-like operating systems!

OpenBSD BASED Challenge Day 1

by Root BSD

It begins!

So day one has definitely been a little touch and go. I realized that I need to relearn tmux(1) and write a new .tmux.conf from scratch. Not sure why, but xterm + tmux is not recognizing the color scheme in my old .tmux.conf. The old one is just one that I found online and repurposed for use in OpenBSD with trial and error. So back to the drawing board.

cwm(1) is nice and lightweight. Easy enough to pick up and use quickly, although so far I have only been using manual tiling. It would be nice to setup an automatic tiling layout in .cwmrc, that's a new priority. Opening a terminal is done with CTRL + ALT + Return. Making a terminal fullscreen is done with C + A + m. Cycling through windows is done with Alt + Shift + TAB, etc. OpenBSD does have a handy dandy man page for .cwmrc configuration. I will be happy to dive into that.

One very important thing I did was configure ksh(1) to show me the working directory. You can add this to your ~/.kshrc

PS1='$PWD' “

And this to your ~/.profile

export ENV=$HOME/.kshrc

All in all it's a nice, minimalist system. On day one though, I realize that I'm a bit spoiled with the modern luxuries of computer software, and I have a bit of a short attention span. I need to rectify this!

Goals for the coming week -

1) Read the ifconfig(8) manpage and get a better grasp on all my options with connecting to wifi. There is a join option I have never used before

2) Configure cwm(1) and read the cwmrc(5) manpage. Automated tiling and autoloading a tmux session would be better for my workflow.

3) Read a chapter of Absolute OpenBSD a day.

4) Setup a ssh public key pair for my OpenBSD server.

5) Setup and configure local unbound(8), a caching DNS resolver.

All in all, day one highlights how much I have to learn about the OpenBSD base system, especially cwm(1) and tmux(1). I am feeling a bit of system shock and withdrawals from modern distractions like YouTube videos, memes on my Mastodon home feed, etc. It will get better. First days are always the hardest. Happy New Year, and happy hacking on OpenBSD!

Workflow Screenshot