After installing OpenBSD 7.4, here are customizations to make it more usable.
$ uname -a
OpenBSD obsd.dev.obsd 7.4 GENERIC.MP#2 amd
Install wireless driver
Run ifconfig and see interface names.
$ ifconfig | grep flags | grep -o .*:
lo0:
re0:
iwx0:
enc0:
pflog0:
In this case, the interface named iwx0. Find details about it in dmesg:
$ dmesg | grep iwx0
iwx0: could not read firmware iwx-cc-a0-77 (error 2)
Download the driver from http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/, choose the version you using, in this case is 7.4: http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/7.4/iwx-firmware-20230629.tgz
copy the file to an USB formatted as vfat filesystem so all OSes can read from it.
Mount USB
Find the partition to mount: run as root
If the device is sd1, use sd1c as man disklabel explained:
disklabel supports 15 configurable partitions, a through p excluding c. The c partition describes the entire physical disk, is automatically created by the kernel, and cannot be modified or deleted by disklabel.
# disklabel -h /dev/sd1c
# /dev/sd1c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: DataTraveler 3.0
duid: 0000000000000000
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 1884
total sectors: 30277632 # total bytes: 15138816.0K
boundstart: 0
boundend: 30277632
16 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
c: 15138816.0K 0 unused
i: 480.0K 64 MSDOS
j: 679424.0K 1024 MSDOS
Here the partition we want to mount is j.
obsd# mount /dev/sd1j /mnt/
obsd# ls /mnt
iwx-firmware-20230629.tgz
Run as root: fw_update /mnt/iwx-firmware-20230629.tgz to install the driver.
Turn on wifi
Run as root:
# ifconfig iwx0 nwid WIFI_NAME wpakey PASSWORD
# ifconfig iwx0 up
# dhclient iwx0
To auto-connect to the wifi on startup, add a file named: /etc/hostname.iwx0 with content:
nwid WIFI_NAME wpakey PASSWORD
inet autoconf
Note: change iwx0 in filename to your real interface name.
Install packages
# pkg_add firefox git tmux redshift
Update firmware
# fw_update
Change window manager
Default window manager is fwwm, right click choose cwm.
To set it permanently, write a file at $HOME/.xsession
# use UTF-8 everywhere
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
# load Xresources file
xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid slategrey &
xterm &
redshift &
exec cwm
Read man cwm for default key bindings.
Enable power management to suspend
rcctl start apmd
Then type zzz to suspend.
Append a line to /etc/rc.conf.local
apmd_flags=
To start apmd with system.
Conclusion
Hello OpenBSD once again in 2024!